


Reserata Carcerum: Part Two

by Natrix



Series: Reserata Carcerum [2]
Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms
Genre: Beauty and the Beast Elements, Erotica, F/F, F/M, Horror, Psychological Torture, Romance, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:42:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25695241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natrix/pseuds/Natrix
Summary: Part Two of the Reserata Carcerum series.Sophie Harker has now bartered for her fathers freedom in exchanging her life for his own. No longer an innocent to the Counts depraved nature, Sophie struggles to hold onto her decency, kindness and bravery in the wake of her deal with the Devil. But time is a wicked thing and she comes to find the Prison without Locks has an unfortunate effect on ones psyche and spirit.
Relationships: Dracula/Original Character
Series: Reserata Carcerum [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1849231
Comments: 74
Kudos: 72





	1. April 11th 1897

**Sophie Harker's Diary**

**April 11th 1897**

* * *

I suppose I slept there until he returned

“That can’t be comfortable.” The Count with this abrupt announcement woke me and brought back my memory of all which had proceeded. 

“Is he… Is he alright then?” my voice was raw and worn from the exertion of tears long dried tacky to my face which felt swollen and stiff now.

“The last I saw him.” I searched for sincerity but left unsatisfied, the only comfort being that he had no reason to lie to me and that from what I had learned his gluttony for cruelty any excuse to torture me if the opportunity arose might have been taken. 

‘ _ Bllb’ _

A strange noise which came from across the room.

The fire had died mostly by then but there was still some light though the light was cooler and we were as far as I could see alone.

“Did you hear that?’ I asked, something about the noise had been too strange to dismiss. 

“Sorry what?” There was something mawkishly dishonest at the widening of his eyes. 

_ ‘Bllb’  _

“There it was again.” I stood, following the noise which was surely coming from across the room, though I could not specify exactly where.

“Your hearing things, look why don’t you tot off to bed, get some proper sleep?” He said with a wave, entirely too dismissive and too compassionate. I crossed my arms facing him having reached the head of the table and took him in uneasily. He was neither kind nor compassionate so what was he up to?

“I quite assumed you’d want to simply… Get on with it.” I managed, only a little embarrassed as I said those words in that particular way allowed. He smiled, the innocence falling away just a little to the raptorial sharpness below like the edge of a glacier just peeking above the surface of the water. I raised my hand to my neck and felt for the clasp of the cross. I tried not to think about what I was doing. A deal had been a deal after all. 

“Well actually-” He began but then-

_ ‘Baaabbb’  _

Much closer than before, and this time I placed the noise. It was the unmistakable crooning of an  _ infant _ . My eyes darted, and closed upon a burlap sack left upon the banister. My hands stilling upon clasp as I watched the burlap sack jostle with movement from within. 

In a day of horrors I was amazed to feel so acutely the pull of instinct which then gripped me. 

“T-thats a baby!” Without waiting I strove to get to the sack only to have it suddenly taken just out of my reach by the long arm of my companion.

“This is nothing that concerns you.” He said, lightly, holding the bag above him and out of my reach. The poor little wretch inside, upset by this motion began the unmistakable shaking bleating of a newborn. “Ah! Now look what you’ve done.” He clicked his tongue in displeasure and I feared he was about to shake the bag in order to silence it.

“Please! Please don’t! Let me comfort it at least.” He regarded me with a veiled look I could not interpret and then rolled his eyes. 

“Just don’t go getting attached.” He said and lowered the bag, allowing me to snatch the bundle from him. 

The coarse fabric made my flesh itch but I ignored this, I laid the bundle again upon the banister and found its opening. Small chubby legs kicked free. A cloth nappy pinned between his legs was wet. His ribs showed stark beneath his flesh as he bleated with guspy breaths, his face red with fury, and his little fists shaking. 

“Shhhh.” I said, gently pushing back the cloth from the velvet softness of the newborn's head. I picked him up and curled him into the nook of my arm, attempting to resist the watery swell like a burp of grief threatening to escape as I rocked. Curling the baby into my body and attempting to preoccupy both it and myself as I stroked his face. Struggling to remember some song or verse in which to sooth it.

Why this song, I cannot say. Perhaps it is simply the place itself which pulls only the darkest parts forth, the most somber. For there were far more simpler songs to sing than this one which was not such as a nursery tale so much as an old ballad that I learned from an old maid we once had, who had sung so often it was a joke within the house that she had been the maiden in the song.

_ ‘Abroad I was walking _

_ One morning in the Spring, _

_ I heard a maid in Bedlam _

_ So sweetly she did sing; _

_ Her chains she rattled in her hands, _

_ And always so sang she. _

_ I love my love _

_ Because I know he first loved me. _

_ My love he was sent from me _

_ By friends that were unkind; _

_ They sent him far beyond the seas _

_ All to torment my mind. _

_ Although I've suffer'd for his sake, _

_ Content will I be, for _

_ I love my love _

_ Because I know he first loved me. _

_ My love he'll not come near me _

_ To hear the moan I make, _

_ And neither would he pity me _

_ If my poor heart should break, _

_ But, though I've suffer'd for his sake, _

_ Contented will I be, For _

_ I love my love _

_ Because I know he first loved me. _

My voice hitched upon here for the lad upon the song shared that name of my father, and my voice became thick with emotion, destroying even the sad tune I might carry.

_ I said: My dearest Johnny, _

_ Are you my love or no? _

_ He said, My dearest Nancy, _

_ I've proved our overthrow; _

_ But though you've suffer'd for my sake, _

_ Contented will I be, For _

_ I love my love _

_ Because I know he first loved me. _

The infant had settled. Dracula raised his hand and made a motion to clap, but only tapped quietly within his palm.

“Bravo,” and he reached. “Now If you’ll just let me take it from here...” I stepped out of his range, curling over the child possessively. There was no anger in his face, only a bemused look as if he’d expected just this.

“No.” The word fell like a rounded marble clattering across the stone floor.

“No?” He repeated and I backed another step going up a single stair, swallowing carefully around the increasingly dangerously serrated -‘ _ no’ _ .

“Our deal was in regards to me, that doesn’t mean I’m to abide cruelties to any other.” I took another single step up and he followed to the foot of it. 

“So you’ve decided to be _ difficult _ .” I stiffened, fear making my hairs stand like pins, as the doe catches scent of the wolf. My arms stiffening to a cage around the infant I squared myself to be ready for a struggle I could not hope to win. I held his eyes challengingly, refusing to bow back. ‘ _ Kill me if you must’ _ . I thought as my own jaw set.

Instead his shoulders relaxed then rose into a shrug, and instead of tearing the child out of my arms he simply smiled in that exasperated way.

“Have it your way then Sophie. Have it your way.” I flinched as he stepped up and leaned down, but he only paused to say out of the corner of his mouth: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

* * *

Having been prepared for a flight I was left with the scattered rush of energy leaving me a little shaky and depleted. My arms, unused to keeping such a position, ached uncomfortably already. The baby had returned to sleep but there was a little line between his brows and his little fist was at his mouth which he mouthed, drooling and wet. I wondered how long it had been since he last ate, my own stomach hollow and watery.

He needed food and I sought to find it. There was only some cheeses and meats that the flies had already taken to, but I even pulping it with my mouth he was too young to take any. Though my own belly was a little fuller for it, my spirit was bereft for the smaller and more vulnerable of us to remain empty. 

He began crying again not long after, though I searched for a larder of some kind. My arms were leaden from holding him by then and I exhausted myself finding nothing. Without a hope I retired to my rooms.

He… he has not stopped crying. Though I’ve bundled him within linens upon the bed he is almost  _ purple _ with despair and nothing I might do seems to comfort him. Though I am exhausted, each time I close my eyes I am reminded of Dracula's bemused expression and how he so easily gave me my way. 

No doubt he is laughing somewhere at this added horror. I am quite tired now, having recorded both days in one sitting, my pen hand has cramped so badly it will be a wonder this is legible…


	2. April 11th 1897

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sophie struggles to comfort a starving infant, unwilling to allow the child to go to some other darker fate.

Sophie Harkers Diary

April 11th 1897

* * *

My arms ache still and it is difficult for me to write. I have tried what I can to sooth the child and found in my desperation only one thing which has helped. Though it is strange to write out. 

Allowing the child to nurse upon me although they give no nourishment has afforded me with moments of peace. In those I have caught snaps of sleep. But the red apples of my breasts have begun to chafe painfully at his desperate ministrations. Despite that, it gives me some heart to know that I have afforded the babe some small comfort. 

My host has not shown himself since the last. But I there are moments which I swear I feel the sweep of his shadow at my door.

* * *

  
April ~~??~~ _11th_ -1897

\- continued-

* * *

The days blurred so I am uncertain if it has been a whole day or not. It could be still the tenth I suppose... I know only that what is worth recording began with the entrance of my host to my room. Who woke me suddenly with these words.

“I was going to ask you to dinner but I see you're still preoccupied.” 

I was seated back upon a chair, having been sleeping or at least not conscious with the child at my breast. His abrupt entrance alarmed me, and I jerked awake, breaking the child free from my breast causing him great distress as I sought to cover myself with my shawl. His piercing warble of distress sounded too sharp for my aching temples and I winced. 

“Please he needs food.” I said, not in the least that I myself needed food. My plea fell upon deaf ears.

“You wanted to keep it.” He said as if I was the cause of all my own despair and a note of exasperation.

“It's starving!”

“And if I had anything to do with it, it would be quite well put out of its misery.”

He came to lean upon the corner of the great old four poster bed, his arms crossing. From beneath the shawl I struggled to refasten the baby and keep myself covered decently from sight at once. Humiliated but distracted from such feelings as the babe, finding my breast again gave such strong pulls that I whimpered. 

The pink flesh of my other breast had begun to crack making his ministrations unbearable upon my left side already and I couldn't help but wonder if this was a suffering all mothers experienced or only false ones such as myself.

“Look you’ve made your point, let me have him now and we can put this all behind us.” He bent then so his face was more level with my own. Promising relief with the devils tongue. “No more suffering, no more crying. It won’t feel a _thing_ , and you can still say you tried. It's all _very_ noble.” 

I slapped him.

Whether it was exhaustion or just the rage which finally boiled over into this expression of madness, I cannot say only that I was as shocked as he was to feel my hand stinging from the contact which was followed by the frantic gust of breath from my chest.

_“Get out!”_

He veritably _lunged_ causing me to jerk back snarling in such a way that I feared he was to snap my nose off. In instinct I closed my eyes, flinching as bodily as possible away so I could not see his face.

“ _Have it your way Sophie_.” He said with such black vindictive satisfaction as I had ever seen that it left a sour and bitter a taint to the air as arsenic.

The door shuddered in its frame upon his departure, leaving tremors like the echoes of an earthquake long after the room rang thick again with silence. The babe was to die, as surely as it would have out of my arms, instead it was die within them, starving. I had knowing it the moment I had taken him, I supposed I had hoped that I too would be taken. Instead us ghosts still in our flesh sat aching, miserable and weeping in torment. 

This I’ve recorded when I had got the strength to. God how my breasts ache. They bleed too and I find myself just as famished as the little thing so desperate that blood is as good as milk to him. I pray only for the end to come sooner, however wretched that may be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Sophie


	3. April 13th 1897

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't normally trigger warn, but by my standards there are some legitimate horrors in this chapter. Things that make me gag to write, so, heads up Author to dear Reader.

**Sophie Harkers Diary**

**April ~~??~~ _13th_ 1897**

* * *

I am unsure what day it is for I am certain to have lost one or two. When I woke sometime in the noon hour the baby was cold and hard, stiff about my nipple for which it died sucking so feverishly. Peeling myself free was a fresh agony as the wetness had grown tacky and my flesh peeled away fresh and raw, bleeding from its little mouth which was grey, the only color now the smear of my blood left behind marking its lips a grotesque ruby. The flies buzzing around him and I tickling my face, a torment in itself to have there fat frantic bodies badger me and crawl seeking refuge in the infants cavities. already little white clusters formed around his ears and nose and I fought not to gag though I had been so long without food I fear nothing would rise. I rose stiff to bundle him up. Too tired to do more than that beyond refixing my dress before I collapsed beside him. 

* * *

Whether I slept much or little it is hard to say. 

There was no dreaming only the moment which I opened by eyes to see my captor and host standing at the edge of my bed, looking down upon us, as one would contemplate most a tragedy with bowed head and distant solemn expression. Though he did not look at me, he must have sensed I had risen for he spoke, low in the feted musk of the gloom.

“There you are then. Such a waste.” A breeze blew in, sweet and cool dislodging the gassy scent which unmistakably began to fill the room. I had not opened the window, so I suspected he had. The scent of spoilage, fermenting, not yet the pungent reek of rot, was too strong to ignore. I could taste it in the back of my throat and feel it like the egg sac clusters of maggots might be in the corners of my mouth, in my ears and fought the overwhelming swell of panic, that hint of madness which might send my flying to claw at my own flesh, crawling. 

It might as well have been that flies had crawled into my ears as I slept because my mind was buzzing, foggy and aching, my lips dry and cracking. But that only on small pain in a series of greater ones which I remarked as I sat up. The head first, then the limbs and worst of all my breasts still, which seemed to be fused to the fabric of my dress having weeped and oozed as I slept. The flesh was now fixed and stiff upon those weeping sores of once budding tender flesh.

I made only a small noise of pain, still trying to bring myself up. The count was still regarding the bundle and moved to pick it up. 

From outside, the breeze carried a long haunting howl, joined soon by a chorus. 

“Waste not want not I always say.” I did not then quite understand, even If I had not been in such pain I doubt I would have imagined what he’d do, or could even have risen to prevent it.

Horrors are always worse for those who have never been subjected to them... You simply cannot anticipate, or expect the physical possibilities of the cruel and polluted mind. Having lived a life of decency, I was incapable of anticipating or predicting so twisted a nature. But I am young still, and learn quickly. Especially so in matters of pain.

He took the bundle in one arm and, pushing the window open further, looked almost like he was admiring something beyond, when he simply leaned out and with an obvious motion opened his arms, releasing the bundle into the void of darkness.

“NO!” I shot up feeling the flesh of my breasts tear even as the cry tore my throat as I scrambled up to where he stood at the window lurching into him.

“Bastard! Bastard!” My palms stung with the blows and my breasts even more so with each movement striking agony through me, though he remained stoically unaffected not even facing me. God I wanted to hurt him, I tried to, but instead he hurt me. 

He turned, his face not angry but that worse blankness, _empty_. I had not been prepared for the blow he landed across my face which resounded like a crack, my head rang with it, and it silenced at once the murmur of fog and all other clamoring pain as I stumbled back into the bed where I barely managed to catch myself up on its edge. 

He would have set upon me then, I think. Splayed and prone, barely holding myself upright by the covers. But through my open dress the cross still lay above my clavicle and he turned only away with a snarl. 

“I have been extraordinarily patient.” He said, there was barely restrained savagery as I watched him hunch upon the window ledge, his hands flexing, the tendons standing out through the flesh as he flexed.

“Cover it.” He commanded. 

He did not say to remove it but I was in no mind to argue. My face throbbed, but it was lost in the cacophony of distress which rose to fill the temporary void filled by the violence of the act, now subsiding and making room for all those other pains again with the added heat of my cheek throbbing. Without space to think I obeyed, twisting the cross so it hung round the back of my neck.

He seemed to sense this and regained his height as well as his composure. My gaze skirted from his face dreading to meet those eyes and instead to the coverlet I gripped, attempting to shift myself straighter but this too was a pain. 

His hand extended to my cheek and I flinched, already a dog cowering in anticipation for the kick. Sending a fresh throb up my face which felt stiff from the blow as my face tightened into a grimace. 

“Let me see.” I kept still, my eyes closing and I counted the pulses of behind my eyes as felt his fingers roving. They were blessedly cool but the flesh stung. “It may bruise”

He announced as if it mattered, then as he declared this his hand slipped lower to my throat and then to the line of my dress. I brought my forearm across by instinct much like that flinch, attempting to protect the delicately torn flesh that was packed beneath, if not fused to the fabric. 

“Shhh.” He said and firmly peeled my forearm away.

I struggled against the urge to close upon myself. He took up my hand and firmly placed it upon his arm smoothing his hand over mine until I clenched. He was right to, for he began to peel the fabric away from my breasts and I clawed at the fabric.

Agony. 

Its wordless, and impossible to do justice with words. only that it is such that it moves beyond description, it becomes noise, singularity of experience, eclipsing the sense of self so completely that there is no singular conscious as much as the singular experience of pain.

No thought then to decency as the flesh followed the fabric, glued by dried fluids, and the weeping cracked flesh splitting as he stripped the dress down my shoulders. 

“Easy now.” He murmured and it took all within me to allow him to pull it all away. Exposed then, I feared a touch, or a tweak no doubt to increase my pain, which I could only imagine should I look upon his face he would be drinking in my suffering that very moment. There was no smugness however when he spoke only detached methodical timbre. 

“Would you prefer immediate relief or slow?”

“As if what I desire matters.” I spat, “As if I have real choices!” Even my voice was that of ragged rasping edges, punctuated only by the spurts of pain, goring me, driving me to hysteria. 

I felt him move away a little at that and risked opening my eyes, my hand still clutching his forearm with the other upon the coverlet. 

He’d been leaning over me, pressing upon the bed to examine me and he now sat back, dropping to his knees and leaning upon his heels and meeting my gaze with those thick brows raised in an incredulous unimpressed look.

“You know I don’t remember making the suggestion of our little arrangement, and I **do** remember allowing you to have your way with the baby.” I had to resist the rise of fury which made my hands ache with the need to again strike him.

“You’ve put me in the place in which the alternative is infinitely more unbearable!” 

His eyes veiled in that distance of abstract thought and observation, but a softness as if whatever it was that I said pleased him. And my loathing rose. I'd seen it before. on the piano bench, at the dining table. That goading, goatish look, machinating look that made me both self conscious and helpless. So precarious was my state I was unable to hold it all in. My mind came out vitriolic and raw, honest in my incapability to withhold my self.

“I hate that.” I hissed, feeling all the ichor of my hate for that smug look, scalded my throat.

“What?” He asked, oblivious to his own insufferable quirks.

“That _look_ , like I’ve pleased you. I _hate you_.” I felt stupid, pathetic and small, quivering like a child, helpless. 

“Absolutely fair.” He said with an amicable chuckle and his gaze lowered to my breasts his head tipping to consider. Only then did I feel the extent of my exposure to him. As if the act of making me self conscious brought me back to the myself. They were bared, the fabric pulled away and hiked down my shoulders. What was worse? Seeing the ravaged remains of them, the scent of scabs forming from my own breasts? Or being ravaged by his gaze? Fresh humiliation welled, but he was unconcerned. 

“As requested I will decide.” He was speaking about the ‘slow or fast’ option. “And as **I** am deciding, I will choose that which gives me the most pleasure.” He added salting my wounds as one salts the meat upon their spoon before taking a savoring bite. 

This was one of those things which by my insulated nature could not have expected, it is only in hindsight that these atrocities seem... Expected.

He brought his face to my breast and clamped upon me as an infant. As he did so his hands snaked about my waist, pulling me closer to the edge of the bed with a jerk securing me. 

There was no feeling at first but the mental distress of being subjected to this assault. And my breast aching so much already, was numb at first to this new sensation only flaring indistinctly more acutely as I was pulled within his embrace. My mind running in all directions I was mostly just a helpless animal, blank of mind and crying out, slapping his head to no effect, beyond him snatching at one wrist and securing it firmly to my side with a firm squeeze of his fist over mine. Not threatening or painful, that, just **firm**.

Degraded, and exhausted I could not bear the position of straining backwards much. That is the real agony in this kind of torture, if it ended during my animal panic there might have been some insulation. But it did not, I returned to myself, sitting there and too aware of the effort of resisting and the pain it caused, and brutalized I submitted, folding over so that my back at least was not strained if only to relieve the terrible seizing of the muscles surrounding the centre of my spine. My head stooping, chin down, and my shoulder curled in so that I might have looked to any who might observe a willing creature. 

He licked, I could feel that now more acutely, as if the miasma of pain was being broken through to allow more subtle sensations. I might have preferred the pain, for now I felt the probing ministrations of his tongue and lips and how he sucked upon me. He groaned, a reverberation of this passing through me. 

This entire sequence lasted only a moment really, most of it my own psychological tumult drawing out my own agony, before he switched to the other breast. The first breast peaked in the cool air, to my amazement relieved of the burning throbbing agony and replaced with only a tingling sense of cool relief. The other still hot and sore, was given the same attention and I was surprised to find myself being quickly relieved of the agony instead of further oppressed by it. 

Then he parted from my breasts and marked a cool damp trail up my sternum. Kissing and licking my unclean flesh to the dip of my clavicle where his tongue dipped again as if exploring the terrain there. My head still throbbed but his coolness was pleasant and I felt my pulse jump against his lips, his hand gripping my fist took it and placed it upon his shoulder, instructing me to keep it there with a stroke as he resumed crawling up me with his mouth and stretching torso.

Upon reaching my cheek which stung bitterly still I flinched, and he withdrew. 

For the first time I opened my eyes to see him. His hair was roguishly mussed and he panted with gleaming wet lips, which was relaxed into an unconcerned pleasant way as he took his hand to pat my smarting cheek, there was that firm stroke again. Not exactly cruelty, but not kind either. A reminder, an acknowledgement. 

“Choices Sophie, we all face _consequences_ for our choices.” He said summarily, and I cringed for the ache, and seeing that his hand gentled the motion and it was followed by equally gentle expression “My temper slipped before, I’ll not make a habit of it.”

“Even if I make a habit of giving you reason to be angered?” I asked and with that returned enough to desire to tuck myself away, pulling my clothing back to myself, an attempt to regain any shred of modesty.

“If it gets to that point, we both know how that ends.” He said, trailing his hand back to my clavicle, not interrupting my struggle to right the fabric with my tired fingers. His words however surprised me, confused me really.

“Is there to be any **other** ending?” If there is I cannot imagine it and this thought disturbs me, because I have not been able to anticipate many things which he has proven capable of.

“Every book has a last page, Sophie. A beginning, a middle. An _e_ _nd._ ” He said with a breath and tapped his finger upon my nose. “That it ends is inevitable, but its the prose isn't it that makes the ending? How it gets wrapped up is always different, how we get to the ending, and what we fill those pages with too is a mystery.” To my surprise he batted my fumbling fingers away and took my place, with surer easier fingers to 'button me up' as if I were a small doll or child. I thought as seriously as one can in the few moments I had about his words. They brought no ease exactly.

“It is a horror novel, that is to be sure.” I remarked, mostly to myself.

" **Are** you sure?" He asked, certainly to addle my brain, which it did, making me a bit angry as well. I was already becoming a little more like myself, for better or for worse and scowled. Though he didn't look up he seemed to feel it and continued. "Consider Sophie that I might let **you** author the tale, and If I were to, what you would fill your pages with." He finished his fingers work and gave me a genial smile patting my lap and as tenderly as a father kissing his child goodnight he touched his lips to my forehead and patted me gently on the cheek which was not smarting. His words floated like leaves upon a still pond, not yet sinking below the surface.

“It's better now isn’t it?” He asked and in regards to my breasts, and I was surprised to find he was right, though I certainly wasn’t about to examine them before him. I nodded. Though I didn’t quite understand how the pain might have been eased. There was an inkling of gratitude, but before I let that feeling gain any traction I reminded myself it was only by his cruelty I was afflicted so in the first place.

Instead I wondered at his words and at the rules of our new engagement, struggled with it to understand what he meant, and what it meant for me. I felt like a child being led through a game where the rules are never spoken aloud, but you are still playing and expected to learn the rules none the less. 

“Should I presume then that the extension of my life, if not the quality depends upon the pleasure undertaken by my company?” I asked, hoping for something of a straight answer, but that would have been too much wouldn’t it?

“ _That_ would be telling.” He said, finishing the last button and looking cheeky and indolently self satisfied. Still I suspect my summation to be somewhat near to the truth. "Only consider you may have more influence than you think." This was the mystery he desired to seed me with and he rose, satisfied he had done his gardening well “I won’t ask you to dinner tonight. I will bring you something instead and refill your baths. Tomorrow, I expect you to join me.” He said and smoothed my dress by my shoulders as if pleased he'd set his little doll to rights again. Considering that it seemed we were to be companions for some indeterminate amount of time I decided politeness could not be the worst course. The thought of water, and food was enough to make me feel a weakness of anticipation.

“Thank you.” The way he smiled made me instantly regret, and such a bitterness and pain filled me up that I crossed my arms abruptly as if all my seams were about to come loose and spill apart.

* * *

He left and I began to catch up my accounts. At this stage I am still numb from it all, and that is a blessing, but its one that cannot last and I dread what is to come if this is only the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts?  
> Mine are mostly anticipation for the coming chapters and curating them for the story to come. But what about you dear Reader? Is Dracula meeting your expectations, is he 'In' character? Is Sophie, in her clouded naivety at least a little familiar to you as much as we might scold her from a distance?  
> Haven't we all gone through the breaking down of innocence (whether quick or slow) and experienced the pain of realizing the world isn't the place you thought it was, and maybe you are not who you thought you were?  
> When exposed to brutality, potentially a brutality without end who do we become? Do we try to hold onto morals born in a place of civility when you are in a realm that does not recognize such laws? Even If you desired to 'rise above', what if you can't? What if its all too much but you still have to endure?


	4. April 14th 1897

**Sophie Harker's Diary**

**April ~~??~~ _14th_ 1897**

* * *

There is not much to mark what I did of my day because I slept for much of it. Upon waking I found breakfast upon a tray on my tables and with it a note and a dress folded to replace my soiled one. 

It read:

> _Clean water as promised,_
> 
> _D._

My mouth was foul and the food a blessing bounty fruit, bread and butters and jams and eggs of polished in blues and greens, cracking to reveal gleaming white boiled flesh slippery and breaking away to that firm dry orange yolk which left a thick grit on my tongue. A fresh carafe of icy cold well water which was slick with sweat as if freshly pulled from the icy depth slaked my thirst for that. Fruits of black flesh, so tart my eyes stung and beneath the thin bitter rind was sweet and sour ambrosia making my belly ache a little with the body of flavor and the decadence of it which destroyed the sour moldering feeling in my mouth. Butter than soothed the ache fatty and sumptuous on leaves dense spongy bread almost meaty in density, with the thick crackly crusts laved with jam leaving my fingers sticky and my tongue raw.

The bath was clean and fresh. I tried not to think that he could enter my room so easily without disturbing me, and pushed it out of my mind as I dropped away my clothing which was as filthy as if I had traveled for days without rest. My breasts ached but the fabric came away freely and it was not that savage kind of ache previously felt more like the full tenderness which warns of a coming mense. Another dreadful consideration. I took my time to examine them, only to find those weeping wounds completely gone, and in their stead silver lines where the flesh had broken not unlike that silver seam which was twisted upon my fathers neck. Before I could dwell upon that my hands sought the rest of my body. Knowing he’d been within my rooms, I felt along my flesh fearful of finding some new soft scar. But I found and no other indication he’d taken liberties as I’d slept. The cross still graced my neck though how long I would bear its protection I knew would be decided by my Host. That had been our deal had it not?

In the bath I slipped, relieving me of the burdensome heat I’d been carrying and the sour musk of despair, of filth and grit. Despite the initial discomfort to the cold it was a balm and once adjusted I lost myself to the stillness and the weightless feeling of my body in the water. 

At first I thought about nothing but the feeling of my own body. My full belly, my raw mouth aching from my gluttony, the coolness of my scalp and freshness of the water sucking away the heat, sweat and grime. 

But the mind cannot be still as long as the body and soon I began to ponder the silver about my breast and about all that happened and was to happen. I wonder what Darwin would make of such a creature, and if he’d left space in his works for such a creature to exist within his laws or if he existed from beyond them somehow. An aberration. I regret again knowing very little of myths, only some spooky sort of tales meant to remind children to keep their windows closed lest chills and fevers be brought to them while they slept.

As I thought of tales I was brought back to his words to me last we spoke. Of being the author of my own tale. 

I think of those things now as I write having prepared myself to go down to dinner. It is strange what cleanliness and a full belly can do, already there is a shadow in my mind separating me like a veil of all that came before. That not so long my father slept fitfully in my bed and we were torn by agonizing tension fearing what was beyond the door. That for some time I spent here, in hunger, with a creature which might not have existed at all except the distinct impression of despair and the weight within my breast.

Yet here I am now, fed and cleaned and graced with fine oils, butter having soothed the cracking of my lip and I find it difficult to hold dearly those memories so with every passing moment they fade like a sunset, the colors ever darkening on my minds horizon. This disturbs me, I _want_ to stay fresh, for the pain to fade so quickly seems… Seems a sin of some kind.

The night outside my window is purpling, darkening like the skin of that fresh tart plum and now I will go to whatever waits below.

* * *

**Sophie Harker's Diary**   
  


**April 14th 1897**

* * *

I write now, from the next morn of my evening and all that occurred thereafter and have now been able to re-write my dates with some accuracy now. I will have to do my best, because I am afflicted with the blue devil’s in a way I’ve never quite experienced. 

But that is getting ahead of myself, while my mind throbs I will chew what has been provided as supplication to the aching behind my eyes and write.

* * *

Dinner then.

It felt like centuries ago that I descended, that way which was strangely familiar now to me to that great room and hearth. 

There. I noted, had been the burlap sack where a fat little leg kicked free…

And down there, where a large fire burned merrily seemingly always. How long had it been since my father sat just there before the fire with me at his side? 

Yet he was there as he always was. At his seat at the head, his back to me at first, he rose as my hand graced upon that spot on the banister, cold where I thought foolishly that it ought to still be warm. 

As he turned it was clear he was admiring my refreshed state and his attention lingered upon the dress he’d provided. It was a heavy dress of emerald and silks, beyond what I normally wore, but fit well which struck me distantly as either being once another's, or perhaps just as disturbing ‘fitted’ specifically for me.

Standing there, it was the first moment I was struck with self consciousness and strangely confused by the clash of instincts which rose to war inside me. One the one hand my English instinct that, now clothed and fed seemed to dim the miasma surrounding the horror spent the last few days, on the other the stubborn anger, and fear that I daresay was the more _rational_ reaction of the two which begged and warned me in equal measure and left me standing feeling immobilized for a moment in uncertainty. An intense urge to fill the silent air with something beyond the weight of silence. In the end my breeding was my only sense left to guide me.

“Good evening Count Dracula.” This formality, feeling a little strange and as foolish as it was. It was a cold small sound in the great hall and it began to settle that I really was alone, without even my father as an escort and that despite any mask I may slip behind it was a reminder that it was nothing but that: a mask, and a game of imitation. 

“Good evening Miss Harker.” He matched my countenance with the good graces of an actor and extended his hand to take mine. Acting was easier than thinking so I accepted his.

He’d kissed my hand before a long time ago, but where hair had tickled my hand coarsely was now only somewhat soft flesh. Yet his kiss reminded me that though the beasts visage had changed, a beast he remained, as the fickle worm parted from between his lips and traced a coaxing circled above a blue vein tickling before disappearing behind a closed press of his full firm mouth. 

“A habit, or a peculiarity among your people?” I asked, keeping my expression reserved, for it would have been impossible to ignore it as he’d quite boldly fixated his gaze upon me as he performed his lewd regards. 

“Oh there are no people like me,” He said, in a low simple way leaving me wondering if I had not heard a thread of something almost forlorn, but he placed my hand upon his arm and it was so brief I suspect it was quite imagined. Either way I was soon distracted by the scent of something savory, the fragrance of meat and herbs making my mouth water in anticipation of something hearty. 

He pulled my chair for me and I sat. He served me, the silver ringing faintly to reveal caramel brown meaty chunks swimming in a rich liquid that had a greasy, shimmering robust gleam betraying a fatty hearty broth of fat golden potatoes and other vegetables, but also some pungent almost exotic spice which made my mouth cramp in eager anticipation. This he ladled generously into a bowl and cut two thick slices of bread. Could this be the much lauded goulash so revered in Hungary?

“Do you feed all your livestock so generously?” I don’t think I meant to say it aloud, for as it crossed my mind did it so seem to escape my lips. As if to answer he spread a thick swath of butter across a hewn slice and rubbed the crumbles from his fingers as he slide the plate to accompany my meal.

“Some dishes are worth taking more care to prepare, it's all about the **q** **uality**.” He said, as if we were in fact discussing the preparation of the soup. Yet I found it difficult not to take some amusement in this honesty where I perhaps should have felt dread. 

“And how does one decide to curate, if indeed to invest in such a task?” There was a popping of noise, the wine bottle expelling its pressure. 

He’d removed it not with a bottle opener but with nothing but his hand and made an amused little face at what must have been a great force as the vacuum released. I feared looking impressed and stirred the soup while he poured a hearty glass of the dark stuff for me.

“First one considers the stock, the _heritage_ one might say.” The wine was set back with a heavy toll upon the wood and with two fingers he pushed the glass as he had with the place which I took as a suggestion to sample. His words however brooked heavier thoughts. 

“My father.” I surmised taking up the glass and bringing it to my nose to smell. There was something in it of that tart fruit I thought of that morning. Of the plum. “And if you approve of the lineage?”

“Then, I observe.” He did that now, watching as I took the wine to mouth, my taste buds quickening as if eager to greet a much missed friend. Having not so long ago forsworn it I decided now I’d had quite long enough time without it. Bitter and earthy I swallowed and licked my lips clean, resisting the urge to nibble the still flaking flesh there. I thought of the wine, and his analogy and rolled my tongue around my pallet enjoying the flavor.

“And what then do you observe that makes your attention worthy instead of, say, eating it directly off the branch so to speak?”

“Anything.” I lifted my brows for so abrupt an answer, questioning. “Anything,” he amended, “That interests me.”

“So broad?” I questioned, comfortable in this mask of etiquette and airs. I was Lucy again, with wine on my tongue. “If I was vain, I might be offended by being considered such a trifle. Made a mouse of me for your cat self to paw at.” Despite the rather airiness of humor, it smacked of truth too close to home. 

“You presume then, there is much I consider worthwhile to invest my interest,” He said, but with such a sinuous lingering of his gaze that I was rattled behind my mask and seeking refuge I found it in my soup bowl, taking my first bite. 

Hearty was an apt description. And my attention was arrested for a moment. 

My host withdrew to leave me in peace to enjoy the meal though I hardly noticed at that moment.

The meat brown but soft from the cooking and a deep red within, tenderly melting on my tongue among the opaque broth which was thick and salty, leaving a tingling brine upon my lips along with a burning less to do with heat and more to do with that particular exotic spice that was so fragrant and mouth watering it made me eager to quench the heat and warmth with the earthy cool wine, deepening the flavors of the golden fat baby potatoes and the sweetness of the caramelized thinly sliced translucent onions. 

It was an exquisitely satisfying meal, and though my breakfast had filled me. **This** felt like nourishment, hot and soaking to the bones, the bite of stinging heat adding a strange depth to the satisfaction, if not a deeper penetration. It was then that the errant thought occurred, during my idle drifting absorption and enjoyment of the meal, likely caused by all the double speaking about cooking and ingredients. And the thought, or rather question was this: Who cooked it? 

A memory welled of our first evening and my compliments to the cook and his vulpine smile given in return. 

On one hand that may be very obvious, yet on the other so strange to imagine that I found myself unable not to ask.

“Count,” And he looked up from some scientific article or paper I made out then to be ‘ _Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische’_ By Rudolph Virchow. German however was not as strong as my French reading so I did not focus much on this. 

“Yes?”

“Do you… Cook?” I had no other more appropriate way to formulate it. His expression never changed except a little crinkling about the eyes.

“You tell me.” He said.

I might have thought I was finally steadying, after days of distress and agony. But now nourished my mind betrayed me with a borderline hysterical image.

The count in an apron as the maids wore around the Westenera's. It was such a powerful image, a real as anything before me and perhaps evidence of my slipping sanity as it was followed with the image of him turning down bed sheets and fluffing pillows. 

An errant surge so powerful before i could dam it behind my hand it escaped.

A choking laugh.

I contracted with effort to keep it within, and my guts ached stretching over a pleasantly full belly now burdensomly full. I bent over the bowl in order to better ballast myself I curled over myself as one might attempt to cage a beastly wild animal that kicked and clawed its way up, despite my best efforts.

“Are you _laughing at me_ ?” Rationally I knew I should tread lightly only my rationality was like some distant governess, unable to do much other than distantly cluck in disapproval. _If only it wasn’t so funny._ This was certainly the edge of hysteria catching up with me, a sort of nervous emergence finally working its way to the surface by way of laughter rather than tears. 

It was agony and sublime at once. 

Like a powerful thrust of a rabbits hind legs, one choke escaped at his question and was quickly followed, impossible once breached to contain, it all sprung free.

I covered my face to smother the escaping, bouncing choking chortles and deep belly rolling clenches that shook up all the soup I’d just eaten, making my belly muscles ache as if squeezing around a great filled bladder and stifled too by the stiff dress fabric.

The last time I’d laughed like this was when Lucy had put ink in Mr. Codwell, a local starchy parishioners tea and his teeth had been stained black for _weeks_ of service! 

We'd never been pious, but we went to service devoutly that week. We'd go and hold our breaths till we were purple hurry home, only to drown in gales of aching fits until we wept, breathless and gagging rolling in Lucy’s sheets until we were tangled, often remembering Mrs. Harvey, on of the senior serving staffs expression as Mr. Codwell offered her his charming smile before departing.

I was all together too terrified to look up to see my hosts expression, and as I lunged for breath I already began asking for forgiveness. 

“I’m sorry, I- only-” If only I could take in a single breath! It was at best a _half_ , before I teetered off, hot in the face the side where I’d been struck especially stinging as I tittered with more convulsive racking giggles.

At any moment he was sure to come and soundly smack me across the face, or something more punishing. My inner governess not unlike Mina pleaded, shaking her finger at me, if only to bully some sense into me, however this seemed to make it only worse. 

It ended only when I was exhausted by it like a fish glubbing helplessly upon shore. I kept my face covered and wiped my weeping eyes trying to summon some half sensible excuse which might spare me from the assured torture coming my way.

“I fear this is some manifestation of nerves, it's only.. _Pfft_.” Not yet too far gone for another wave, I sniggered again, attempting to smother the lingering upstarts. I daresay I would have welcomed a brisk snapping of the neck. I might have told him about my visage of him in an apron, however I apparently am less suicidal than I thought for I managed, finally a proper breath and began again.

“I think the problem is it's really quite good… The uh, food I mean… and one can’t help but wonder when one doesn’t eat, how does one get so good at cooking?” I feared a look up only too see he’d been watching me entirely under perfectly docile dark eyes, without even a wit of anger or indignation. I wasn’t sure to be relieved by that or not, for perhaps it was only a trick of some kind to ease me into some comfort before affording punishment. His mouth quirked though and there was some twinkle in those dark eyes which led to to expect he had somehow enjoyed the spectacle.

“Quite simple.” He said, soft mouths forming over the words, forcing me to breath quieter so that I might hear above the roar of the fire. “Eat a few cooks.” 

“Really?” It should have been horrifying but for some reason in the clouded euphoria lingering everything was faintly funny. Still I tried to be a little serious. “Thats… thats terrible, not funny at all.” Said the governess, but I was mostly trying to convince myself and laughing over my next deep swallow of wine. 

“While they may wilt in other respects Romania has its fair share of cooks.” He admitted coolly, It was easing finally, and I admit to my own curiosity upon the subject as I sniffed and wiped my eyes clear, dabbing with the napkin.

“And you can… Absorb these skills?” He had used that word before I realized now. Absorb. But that had been so long ago, I wasn’t even certain it had happened at all.

“Yes.” I did not want to think too long upon this. So I continued like a church bell to something more frivolous feeling as mad as hops still.

“The papanasi at Lady Vaduva’s, was fantastic. You can’t eat anything? Nothing at all?”

“Just the living I’m afraid, but I do enjoy living vicariously through my choices. Hence the urge for new pastures.” 

“You should know then, we British mostly eat potatoes, and will likely taste only of fish and chips any other given day of the week.” I felt a little like myself then, as I might when I teased my father. 

* * *

> You know, when one only begins to see **everything** as ridiculous it's actually quite easy to be pleasant? Actually there is something to that isn't there? Why bother trying to stay sane when apparently the world was nothing but? This is of course something of my own observation in hindsight of my recording, and I shall now continue as I then felt.

* * *

His response surprised me for its seriousness and sincerity.

“All food is tripe compared to the mind. The _structure_ of the English mind is incomparable to the narrow ignorance most live in. Science is the way of the future, the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. What do you think?” It struck me that his passion was genuine, and I couldn't help but wonder what a thing like him considered to be a _‘light at the end of the tunnel._ ’ I was still feeling a little silly, but did my best to sober myself and respond honestly in consideration.

“I enjoy the benefits of science of course. And I admit to enjoy dabbling in the works although I can’t claim to have a mind for it."

"You think too poorly of yourself, or is it common for Ladies of England to keep Darwin at their bedside?" He asked and was reminded of Lucy and her thought about compliments, mindful I was dealing with a new breed of flatterer now.

"One might enjoy poetry, but have not the grace to write prose." I subjected and he tipped his head in acknowledgement, so I continued. "There are many marvels in London though, I can’t imagine one getting bored. In biology The London Zoo, I’ve always quite liked the Zoo, when I was eight my father took me to see Obaysch.”

“Obaysch?” I could not tell if he was humoring me or genuinely interested.

“He’s a Hippopotamus, I still remember it like it was yesterday, there were so many people pressing in, father had to lift me up to sit upon his shoulders and there he was. Like a fat sleek cow, grey and almost purple or pink, and despite all that somehow manage to be quite a handsome brute. For the rest of the year I only wanted to play or dance the hippopotamus polka. I think that's the year I became a true student of piano. Papa thought I was a prodigy, but I only wanted to play **polka**.” These memories were quick to become bitter on my tongue just as the wine lingered gritty at the back of my throat.

“You know I don’t think I’ve ever heard hippopotamus polka, would you play for me?” I regretted suddenly this sharing of intimate details, of course realizing I put myself in such a position. He seemed to read my expression and became coaxing. “If you show me the Hippopotamus polka I’ll share something equally of interest to you.” He said.

“It won’t be… horrifying will it?” I asked, frankly worried as he came to to the end of the table to offer me his arm, taking up with the other the bottle of wine I noticed. 

“Has it been so horrible so far?” He asked and I did not respond, though I did take his arm and rose with him, taking my glass.

* * *

We retired then to that drawing room. It was strange returning there, for somethings had been righted. No papers lay strewn about any longer, though I saw his lock had not yet been replaced and eyed there the newly rolled papers of those old drawings my father so cleverly unearthed. These were but echoes of a time best forgotten and I made no remark as he led me to the piano and I took my place there, watching as he stooped to begin the fire which kicked up very quickly for him as if by some magick or devilry and we were not long for its heat. 

I was pleasantly full, and in the strange euphoric head space brought about all great and violent emotional exertions and still swaying precariously uncertain whether the next moment would bring horror or more of that fine edged hysteria. 

I had to take a moment to bring myself to touch the keys, pushing him out of my sight and mind where he stood watching, half leaning upon the arm of the canape. Though he rested casually his eyes betrayed the keen sharp interest for which I had to distract myself.

After a few playful half starts, my memory was kindled and my fingers began in earnest. 

No moonlight sonata, or Beethoven no. 5 epic. It brought me squarely back to the pleasures and silliness of youth, the jaunty beat bringing a smile back to my face as I forgot where and when I was. It was just me and Obaysch and holding onto fathers head for dear life as he carried me about to wherever I pointed. 

* * *

As it came to a close my eyes opened, lost for a moment and as they did it was by chance I captured my host's expression. How is one to interpret such an expression? Isn’t it more likely it was a trick of the light? Or some mood from the fire happening to soften the darkness of his eyes to some mimicry of tenderness? When I looked at him, having finally coming to the last notes to silence he said only:

“Thank you Sophie.” My unfinished wine glass was extended then in order for me to refresh myself before offering his arm. “You're not too tired I hope?” He asked, apparently having some plans, beyond remaining by the delightful fire.

“Half delirious.” I admitted, of course we both knew why but there would be no apologies so I continued. 

“Then tomorrow.” He said and he took my arm and beginning to lead me I suspected to my rooms. At that suspicion a sudden unease rolled through me, some fear of returning that beyond the glow of firelight and comfortable masks I would return to a room filled with gassy still air, buzzing with fetid fat flies. And the strength of that image, like all the others that night was enough for me to hesitate on his arm and feel a small jolt of desperation. Desperation to continue the farce just a little longer.

“I think the wine and your arm can keep me cognizant enough.” I said, a little forcefully and he paused to consider me looking almost surprised. I say almost because I cannot truly imagine any genuine look of shock could actually grace his features.

“It's quite a walk,” He warned but continued, “It would be faster if-” And he paused upon the steps which we were yet to tread and turned to regard me seriously. “-If you’d let me carry you.” Was this another one of those tests? I couldn't say for sure, I was tired and it seemed innocent… but was that not the trick of sins? To appear some innocent small relief? I shook my head.

“I’ll do my best.” He almost looked disappointed and despite our congeniality as far as that evening went I took some satisfaction in that denial, as pitiful as it was. I groped the little victory like a greedy starving wretch prizing a moldering bread heel.

* * *

As he warned it was a long walk, that left my legs aching and my throat longing for more wine, but resolutely I said nothing though the bunching cramp in my calf slowed me for several moments and I had to break our pace to stop and squeeze until the cramp relented. He did not make another offer to relieve me, only waited patiently for me to rise and return my arm to him. At some point through the twists and turns I marked the specific feeling of _ascending_ and soon was certain of it. 

* * *

Here I will take a small break from my account as I feel some need to rest my eyes a little and my hand with it.  
  



	5. April 14th Continued

_**Sophie Harker's Diary** _

_**April ~~??/~~ 14 1897** _

_**Continued. . .** _

* * *

Finally it was that we emerged atop a tower, I believe on the castles north side. The gust of night air was a shock of delight, my body hot from exercise and food and refreshing as clean ocean air that I missed from home. But where home was scented with brine here was scented by aromatic swaying dark trees far below our peak yet still saturating the air with their mark on that brisk wind.

The lookout so dark now was not the true captivation, of which I quickly recognized as being above me.

Above us, the sky was alive with blacks as soft as velvet, deep eggplant purples, and deep blues richer than any silks, streaked too with an indescribable maroon and bejeweled with diamonds of endless stars.

There was so much of it that I tried to stretch my eyes wider just to accommodate more of it, my neck craned and forgetting myself completely. 

I was beneath the heavens, and an irony I could later remark: with the devil as my companion. I must have been gawking for a long time because I’d not realized that I was growing chill until I felt the heavy fabric being draped about me protecting me from another gust.

The night had already licked clean my heat without me noticing and the cloak so thick and finely made buffeted this next lusty wind.

“Thank you.” I said without much thinking, though I was aching all over and soon to get dizzy from holding myself up as such I was reluctant to turn away from the beauty.

“Would you like to see them closer?” His hands were a gentle touch lingering upon the cloak draped thoughtfully on my shoulders, his voice a murmur in my ear. I, still thinking about the heavens and being beneath them in a literal sense wondered if he meant that I might soon ascend to them in.

The cow, well fed and happy, ready for slaughter.

Reluctantly I unfixed my eyes to catch his expression and to gauge it, but found he was not at my side at all now and his touch had left me without my even noticing. Instead with a blink, I saw he was several steps ahead before a contraption I'd been too preoccupied to notice in the dark. 

It was a telescope. He was adjusting something, squinting through the small hole at the top, the tube golden cast in the light of the twinkling stars. He gestured to me to join him, only now in his white undershirt. Suspenders marking distinct dark lines through the white, his sleeves rolled up at the cuffs.

“Come here, come look.” There was an eagerness to his voice and I brought myself to move. There was something so _ordinary_ about the way he gestured for me to join him. Holding the cloak about me as I made my way to him, he gave way to me, allowing me to take his spot to look, hovering close yet I sensed a kind of harmlessness and lack of guile which allowed me to focus on his instructions and look through the lens without the wariness I often felt. 

“Lean in just there… Can you see it?” Yes, I did, a beautiful glowing orb.

“It’s so bright.” He hovered over my shoulder, not quite wrapped around me, though I was certain that if I leaned in any direction I would soon meet his arms or his chest. I peeked at him, to see him with his gazed fixed upon that point which reflected in his eyes, not ominously red, but and I daresay this hesitantly: a look of boyish wonder.

It was an image impressed upon me as memory of those stars are. Such a look of innocence was strangely wounding to my spirit, wounding because it was terribly beautiful, when I desired the simplicity of only believing him capable of being terrible and causing terror. This new facet of him was an unwelcome intrusion upon my already frayed emotions.

I returned my gaze to the eye of the scope. Only later would I have the time to contemplate the bruise he then left on my spirit with nothing more than that earnest look.

“She grows brighter the later one gets into April,” He told me, and then in that continual sweetness which was so against the coarseness I knew him for, he said: “I may not have the sunlight but there are millions of other stars in which I might find some consolation.” Yet I caught some bitterness and the sense he’d trade all these stars but for _the_ one he was denied. Truly though I was a moved by this, and that made me uncomfortable, and uncomfortable I sought refuge in humor for reprieve.

“Consolation or constellations?” I teased, feeling stupid, for certainly had I said something so daft to Lucy she would have cut me with nothing more than a roll of her eyes as if to say. ' _Really Sophie, you can do far better than that.'_

However my host was apparently far more easily charmed than my old companion and his eyes crinkled in amusement as he looked at me with eyes that seemed a mirror to the sky, absorbing me a moment to their threshold as I had been absorbed before, but here only brought to the brink of those cool inviting inky waters.

“Are you aware that you have a remarkable constitution?” He asked me, seeming to slake a kind of thirst by taking in my face turned up to him. I was stirred, sensing the shift from boyish wonder to something far more- **mature** and less _innocent_ in those eyes.

“So is that what you find so beguiling? My ability to still find wonder despite despair?” Had I not rooted myself in some bitterness I feared I was to be swept away by his dark current, already I was so close sometimes. He made it altogether too easy to forget his cruelty when he so chose to act decently.

“It’s not all despair is it?” He said, a doubtful look, watching to see If I’d lie. I came close and sighed frustrated I could not muster it. 

“No, and yet somehow any joy or pleasure I do take deepens that despair in the same stroke.” I admitted in frustration, to him and myself. 

“I do enjoy your candor,” He said and then, “What if anything may I ask might deepen the former without effecting the latter?” Why was that both charming and diabolical at once? I barked a very unlady like laugh, but admitted true mirth at its root.

“I’m afraid I’ll need more wine and I can only promise to forget _temporarily_ how despicable you are.” Was this too harsh? My mouth was perhaps already too free from the wine and exhaustion, but objectively he deserved far worse than I could ever say. Certainly more than a broken desk lock and an ineffective slap. Still so close to my body he said only:

“Then it's good I have _such_ a collection.” With a boyish energy joining that brightness of his eyes he drew back as if to simply dash to the kitchen and back again. “It will just take a minute.” And that's exactly what he did, though it's hard for me to fathom exactly what I saw. On moment he was there, the next- wind blown and with dust marked about his cuffs he held a dark bottle which he rose to observe in the dark thoughtfully.

“Germany 1671, you know I believe I got this from a Countess…” 

“Are you showing off?” I daresay he was for he leveled me an affronted look, which could only be on made in jest.

“Can a man not enjoy an evening with a lady?”

“You're not a man.” I reminded him, and myself in the same stroke.

“Ah, but I can _pretend_ to be, which is exactly what I intend to do in London.” He said with gusto, and I realized the wine was not the only thing which he brought, a blanket was folded over his arm to which he then took off and fanned out onto the stone as if to set us up for a picnic. 

“Practice is it?” I asked, aloof, but genuinely curious. He deflected his answer with a suggestion, another strategy I’d noticed he utilized frequently in order to avoid answering. 

“It's quite a bit easier on the neck not straining it to look up.”

“I suppose I should not be shocked that you carry a strong interest in preserving it.” He smiled very wickedly and popped the cork off the bottle which made an exuberant pop! Though this one he let fly with a toothy grin showing the charming snaggly ridge of his lower canines, embellishing that cheeky boyish look he’d taken.

“You are determined to blacken my every deed with foul intentions.” He accused me, pouring me a glass and seating himself he held it like a lure and patted the space beside him. Reluctantly charmed I considered him suspiciously, holding the cloak close about my shoulders as I regarded him and his offer. 

“Are you really so desperate for practice? Or is this the prelude to the end of our arrangement?” I was expecting some infuriating response which could only be interpreted as ‘ _yes, but I’m not telling because I’m a bastard.’_ Instead he surprised me again, by that easy way he moved from being indolently charming to suddenly sincere if not somber.

“Is that what you’d prefer?” I stood for a moment, before relenting for the sake of my aching legs to lower myself to kneel beside him, taking the stem of the wine and eager for a sip.

“What does It matter anyways?” I asked above the glass, my breath fogging it. As I wondered forlorn and frustrated that he must ask me such hopeless things. 

“Perhaps it matters to me.” This tenderness grated upon my sensibilities and I caught the rim of the glass on my teeth at my next sip.

“Must you mock tenderness?” I accused and though his eyes never wavered I shivered as I saw a thin veil a cold calculation behind the depths. “Do you consider me so stupid?” I continued, shivering despite the cloak.

“Not for a moment, but you **do** like it don’t you? Tell me you aren’t enjoying yourself.” I couldn’t so I didn’t and instead I pressed.

“Why then? And for god sake if you say ‘ _that will be telling_ ’… ‘I’ll jump of the tower.” I said and as if to convince him I would follow through with this boldness I tipped back the wine glass finishing it it in two avid swallows, feeling it already working its heat and courage into me. “I’ve powdered the hair enough to do it.” I added and tugged up the cloak around me.

There was a glug and I found my glass refilled my glass, eagerly.

“Very well.” He said, as if coming to a decision and I looked to see he had his arms over his knee’s and was looking up still at those stars which I too followed to gaze at as he spoke. “I’m only telling you because of that constitution of yours I find so, ‘beguiling’ as you put it. It matters because it's more **interesting**.” His words were as cool as the lusty wind and stars. He was at home in this place truly. But I felt relief, at this honesty and sighed as if for the first time I might actually be able to relax. 

I drained my glass again and found myself tipping back, laying back actually with the cloak tucked up under my chin. 

“I think I already knew that, quite a fun game I imagine. Throwing dead babies out of windows and all that.” His grimace was audible, and I was a little surprised by this bitter 'burp', likely carried up by the wine. Suddenly he joined me in laying back. His arm tucked beneath his head, I rolled mine to the side to see the light of his face pale in the moon and starlight. 

“It wasn’t feeling anything, you were the one hurting not it, it seemed prudent to get it over with. You were growing **hysterical**. You know all it takes to go mad can be a little too long _lingering_ in ones own abyss.” He said with all the assiduity and frankness a monster can. 

“Something you must have such experience in.” I pointed out.

“Too much,” He agreed and I sighed thinking to myself for another moment.

“You used a _cooking_ analogy before, that inferred that I’m not yet prepared to your liking.” I think I came close to something important because he had that dark cold look in his eyes again, that even in the heat of drunkenness felt a finger of ice traced down my back. 

“Don’t expect a chef to reveal all his secrets.”

I focused myself upon the sprawling heavens, cold as my companion, my breath fogging faintly. 

“Humor me,” He implored.”Let me into that secret garden of your mind.”

“As if my life depends on it?”

“If that will convince you.”

“Hmm. More please.” I asked suggesting my empty glass in the air. It was graciously refilled and emptied as promptly. “What was the question?”

“What does Sophie Harker desire. Or better, If Sophie Harker could have anything what would it be?”

“To die of old age in my sleep?” I suggested, but snorted taking more wine. I was feeling quite pleasant now and this bitterness was mostly by habit now, rather than feeling, I’d ceased feeling my lips at that point and my body hummed pleasantly. “I just want more time... It all feels very short you know- I don’t even know what _day_ it is anymore.” 

“The fourteenth.”

“Oh.”

The fourteenth I thought, my mind rolling like a galley in a ship. My answer, however vague and drunken seemed to satisfy him for he did not press further and my thoughts rolled in that galley too and fro settling upon morose shores.

“Do you know how old I am?” I had rolled on my side to mirror him as he faced me, arm tucked under my head as his was and cloak pulled under my chin. His eyes crinkled in a thoughtful squint, as one might if they were trying to call something from memory and his mouth worked slightly as if his tongue was rolling. 

“You were born on April 30th 1842 it was raining and overcast and it was quite a few hours until you were born.” This recollection was so precise that my comfort was disturbed immensely.

“How do you know all that?”

“I didn’t, good old Johnny did, and much of what he knew I now know.”

 _“Ooof_ -” a pained exhalation of disgust and displeasure as I rolled back onto my back to scowl at the roof of stars. “That's quite wrong isn’t it? And cruel! Very cruel indeed.” I told the stars with earnest disgust but they were cold and twinkled without a care. 

“That wasn’t my intention.” Though there was no apology in there I noted.

“I’d like to pretend I didn't hear that.”

“Very well, But I do believe to answer your question that would make you Seventeen.”

“Yes, _Seventeen_ . Is **Seventeen** enough?”

“Glasses of wine? Likely.” He teased and I laughed

“Stars?” I prompted, looking up at them. 

“Hardly.”

“To die then?” 

He was quiet for what seemed like several beats of my drunk heart.

“Take it from someone who knows, it's never enough.” This was of no consolation to me, though I cannot imagine anything could be. 

“It hardly seems- It's only- One ought to have **lived** before they die and can one really have lived at all in _seventeen_ years?” I’d like to think of myself as a normally quite gay drunk, but now I found I was of the sorrowful self pitying lot.

“If you weren't going to die in the observable future what would you have done with your life?"

"Well if I found a man who could sufficiently impress me and make Lucy jealous-"

"Is that a requirement?"

"Oh absolutely, Lucy would never give me up to any creature she would not herself submit to-" I said and continued gravely. "-Of course Lucy herself would marry some poor man who'd she'd have wrapped around her finger and we'd have fat babies."

"And you'd live happily ever after?"

"Of course not." I retorted and upon catching his look of interest, drawing him out of the droll bored look my speech had lulled him into I continued. "I'll die in childbirth just like my mother, but there would be an **impression** of happily ever after which would be more vivid and real than anything life might really give me."

"And if you didn't die, what would Sophie Harker do with immortality?”

“Immortality?” I considered this, drumming my fingers on the blanket. “You know Lucy was always better at living than me, I was always afraid to." Of course I had never much considered what a life might be without restraints such as he was suggesting. Even removing death, there was always the simple restraint of being born a women to contend with.

"And if you weren't afraid?"

"I'd go to America and become a pioneer of the new world.”

“Really?” He asked, seemingly with earnest interest. I rolled back to face him because the stars were getting blurry pulling up the cloak beneath my chin. He was watching me very avidly, as I might have watched my hippopotamus Obayse.

“There's this terribly wealthy Texan Lucy had her eye on for me despite me being so clearly too plain in comparison to Lucy-" I told him, as batty as a church bell, hypnotized by my own stories and memories. "-God I'm rambling- I suppose I mean I quite liked his stories, even if only half of them turn out to be true... It's just such a **new** place, a place without history and as much as I like history I've always wished I was brave enough to do something new. Lucy is always doing new things. You know I haven't even swam in the ocean? I was always too scared to swim in it even though Lucy dared me, it's very big and rolly and it frightened me to be something so small inside something so elemental... Perhaps I'd _swim_ to America!” At the end of this long tirade I gasped feeling far more pleasantly drunk and laughed at myself.

“You’d pickle in all that salt, but I rather think you are already quite pickled.” He remarked and moved to take my glass.

“No- not nearly. I’ve not forgotten a thing. Shouldn’t I be… Forgetful?” Struggling with this movement my head began to swirl, my language was already leaving me in chunks but my feelings were as strong, carried on those big waves. 

“Perhaps I’ve kept you up too late.” He suggested. 

At this I was seized with that awful premonition of returning to my rooms and the all too vivid memory swelled in me of what I irrationally feared would greet me- fetid stuffy air, the buzzing of flies.

As if he was taking me away at that moment I found myself clutching at him.

“I don’t want to go down yet.”

“Why?” 

“The baby.” Though the air was cool and sweet I feared the next breath would be tainted, by foul air, by buzzing and tickling. 

In the light of the moon, his head laid upon his arm there was something sympathetic in his look, and invited by my touch, he touched me. Stroking my cheek and skimming my lip, that despite being numb, tingled pleasantly.

“You were so determined to have it your way.” He mused, half marveling half mocking. “But it can be other ways too you know, Sophie if you’ll let it.”

The tide of my body swelled upon the deep pull of the dark moon of his eyes, sucking me in, lighting my flesh with heat where there was only numbing cold. 

‘ _When did the stars start swirling like that?’_ I was struggling to think clearly, remembering his words and what they could mean while also conscious of liquid heat beginning in my belly. 

“If I let, **you** , you mean.” I asked, suddenly sure that either he was growing closer or I nearer, for the next I saw only his brow and felt the strong grip of his hand at the back of my neck, fingers cradling my scalp and the skim of flesh against my lips.

"Let me have you."

"Our deal-."

"Forget the deal. Welcome me upon your own desire, upon your own will." He whispered, like a hiss, like a snake travelling to my belly, a forked tongue coaxing the flesh to part.

Desire kindling in my belly was a reprieve from aching sorrows. My stillness only a pretense of resistance, broken as he slipped inside my mouth, soaking the heat with this tongue as if I was the oasis for which he drank … Anticipation began.

Anticipation equal to my dread and revelry.

I wanted a part of it to be over with.

_'Let him take it all quickly and be done.'_

In the other I wanted strangely… To be punished. The weight of the child was heavy within the belly as if he had been my own. Now that belly was coaxed to arousal, deepening my shame and bitterness.

_'Let him hurt me! Let him take me. I deserve nothing better, the vile creature I am!'_

I despaired, cast adrift of myself, born on the choppy seas of strong drink and senses. 

And the last feeling I might synthesize into thought:

_'Let this maddening pain and hopelessness just be eased... Just for a moment!'_

Without realizing it I had begun to sob, despair which his greedy mouth swallowed and soon I was pressed beneath his weight, his cold body invading the warmth of the cloak, eager to invade my heat as he'd supped it from my mouth. His weight soothed the storming in my breast while deepening that of my belly. As if all that attempted to break through my inner walls was furloughed and kept from spilling out only by him. 

The loin of his thigh pushed between my legs demanding they part enough so he might nestle his hip to my crux. I whimpered driven both by the currents carried within me as well as my despair and it was devoured by his own profane noise. Stoked by my pain, driven to devour it. He moaned, a deep belly aching reverberation like a cats purr as his tongue withdrew with interest to take instead the hot salty trail of my tears.

" _Sophie."_ He moaned. My own name which had always seemed to me to be a boring thing was suddenly strange and mysterious spoken so sensually. I was just 'Sophie.' surely this ' _Sophie_ ' was someone completely different and some mistake had been made?

There was an increasing sensation his weight, shifting in undulations subtly heightening and building a new feeling. Every thing carried deeper on those drunken waves and soon there was nothing but the building of that tide, crashing and throbbing as he hitched himself maddeningly between my legs without ever even removing my dress while his mouth found many satisfying occupations: tasting my tears, or hungrily consuming my whimpers of despair and ecstasy that he might capture directly from my lips. Taking them with his strong possessive mouth.

Coaxed by his kisses and his motions, my belly cramped in ever increased acute anticipation and with that was a strange promise: a promise to eclipse my despair and engulf me so totally- If only I had more.

The stars were singing in celestial silence above, and my lungs burned. As the feeling built, my fingers skimming the edge of some celestial plane the trappings of my mortal frame became an increasing agony, my dress restraining my legs, the dampening a torture.

My head was growing thick, dizzy, my desire pounded like a drum, wild in my mind and my chest. . . He was kissing me so fervently, it was nothing I'd ever felt, his lips, the feeling of his teeth upon my lips, he stole my breath and made me forget to care.

He was asking me something again, was it that same sinuous question? _Let me in_. His tongue demanded his body demanded, and I felt the words trace my skin like fingers begging for entry. I felt myself answer, but what I might have said... I think was... **_No_**.

* * *

**April 15th 1897**

Finally I have recounted my evening and arrive now to the current day.

When I woke it was upon my bed with the most violent of blue devils. Head throbbing and in great need of water to find it beside my bed with two strips of something and a note which recommended I chew them. They looked like thin scraps of leather but I found it was actually like the inner bark of a tree. The note said it was a willow tree bark and it would help with my aches for which there were many.

That frustration, the keenness of it was the last I consciously remember. There are shadows sometimes. Like whispers or aches… Yet I do not know if is an ache of satisfaction met or sign of denial of it. Only that I am sensitive in a way I have never been before. I have found no true mark upon my body, and my cross is still in place despite my waking within my undergarments.

The only 'mark' is the unusual tenderness and heaviness in my breasts as if they are two stones, I suspect my mense will come with a fury this time, just my luck to bleed in torrents so near a beast. Though I must say they have never hurt so intensely. By my examination of them they are quite engorged, though the marks upon my apples remain healed with those silver lines. 

Along with breakfast was also a new dress folded, embarrassingly I found it too painful to constrict my self in the garment so I stayed in my nightdress. I had hoped as I record my pain would reduce enough that I might redress, however I fear that is not the case. I've now also been able to return to previous entries and enter in the dates as accurately as they may ever be. Now I spend my time considering my host and put to words the feelings and thoughts which I might about my host and my ominous 'position' here in this place.

My first conclusion is that which he handed to me: I am in a way a method to practice his coming to England, but the second my own observation. That he enjoys me as some kind of experiment or in the least as an amusement in which to toy with.

Whether he has some further aim for me... I cannot say.

I think back to even my first night at the castle, when he so audaciously took liberties in touching me, leering at me before my very father and how it amused him to see me react. I wonder if that was not my first mistake.

The sin of catching is attention.

For the next was an escalation of force and with each a greater: The piano, the library… Each revealing his depravity and intentions, and abusing my boundaries more with each stride.

The infant too, had that not been some test? To bait me and see how far I went? I still remember his smile, as if when I took it he'd. . . Expected it.

To contemplate the last night… I find it difficult to bear. I drank myself... Beyond silly, and into sin. I can see now I was not entirely myself and I believe that had been my entire goal. To be anything but myself, myself that wretched creature who held a dying starving infant in this very room... A girl whose innocence died with it I fear.

Outside of this place was once a girl named Sophie Harker, she had a best friend Lucy Westenra, a wonderful father and she lived in relative comfort and ignorance. That girl was to go on a trip with her father to Romania, return to see him married and either live out her life as a spinster companion to her dear friend Lucy, or find some hopeless fool for which she might be brought to some feeling for and raise fat happy babies beside Lucy.

But that story, that life was arrested. What is left when everything that was is stripped away? No father, no mother, no dear Lucy, no forward, no backwards. No self.

Though it would be simple to say that The Count encouraged my drunkenness and pressed his advantage upon an innocent I feel his words with equal chill.

 _We all make our choices Sophie_.

It was my choice to drink so near a beast. My choice to try and forget my burdens. In my heart, I fear the conclusion I might have found in that dark night. How… How ready I was to. _Give up_ and give in.

I feel both shame… And yet some grim resolution and clarity for the first since I traded myself for my father.

If what girl 'Sophie Harker' was is to be stripped away and one thing remains… I wish it to be something good, **anything** good and as I write here I am determined to hold fast. . . To not permit it spiritually if I cannot 'fight it' physically.

The reality I will die here seems the only certainty. If my virtue was taken by force then perhaps that is a sin forgivable, and the last strength in which I might abide by in the end. For at least not having given in… Completely. For the count was correct, I am still my own Author, I still have choices, as small as they may be... They are the only autonomy left to me. To say 'No' when he asks for 'yes'. If only I can prove strong enough... And this I fear despite what ever resolution may shine through my script. I am still human, I grow weary, I ache for pleasantness and an ease of despair and burden. I still grow hungry, sleep well or poorly. If last night proved anything to me is how precarious my spirit is truly, how easily I am swayed, magnetized by the heady pull of Him.

I am sleepy now and will take my time to rest. My headache has reduced though sometimes when I close my eyes I swear I hear the baby, but this is only an echo of my memories, still haunting me. When I wake, I think I will find myself in the library for some consolation and company among old and new friends.

* * *

That is where I found myself still in my night dress unfortunately for the tenderness of my breasts did not reduce, and I admit to taking some glee in finding the excuse not to bother.

Truly though I was quite confident that I would not be disturbed or made to be embarrassed by my state of ‘undress’ since I was almost certain my host did not, or perhaps _could not_ be 'about' during the day hours. 

Superstitions.

Despite all that has occurred, my mind stretches with difficulty over all these new queer laws which underlay those natural laws I have lived and trusted so long. Even now my mind rejects these concepts at times as preposterous despite having bearing witness to them. His speed, his monstrous desires and the effect of them upon the flesh and spirit… Despite recollecting them, with the light of day, with the absence of his oppressing presence I begin to question all over again.

My world had become a strange one, I thought as I wandered down the empty and sometimes dark stone corridors in nothing but my shift and slippers.

Soon to die, though I knew not when and rather than form some plot to escape or cheat the beast which was to bring my demise I was considering rather about a _foray into fiction_. Something in which to break up the all too heavy non-fictional work of Origin of the species which I had just finished and now carried with me to my destination.

As I made my way, attempting to keep myself from getting too lost (for which there was genuine risk!) there was an echo, like a faint voice but it seemed to have come from such a distance for by its reaching me it was an indistinct noise serving only to give me a sense of uneasiness.

Bending my head to hark, I halted in the corridor and held my breath waiting for another sound. 

Nothing. I settled myself believing this was to be a nothing more than perhaps some rats having a collie shingles in some dark hall and continued on my way. 

Still I admit to not being completely settled and felt a little too keenly afterwards some sensitivity to my senses and the uncomfortable sense of being observed. I attribute this to my state of undress which I became quite conscious of, my confidence wavering as I continued farther into the labyrinth from the respite of familiar rooms. 

* * *

To arrive at the Libraries great doors lessened the trepidation which had built immensely and the vastness of the room opened before me along with the scent which was of such a familiar comfort it brought tears to my eyes. 

Light slanted through narrow windows, some stained glass throwing magnificent red and greens to the floor, dust motes floated lazily which were stirred to greater agitation by my slippered feet. 

I brought light to the sconces, submerged and in awe again of its enormity and of the works which stretched from floor to ceiling again.

To simply 'dive in' seemed a crime, like eating too quickly, so I first took the opportunity to make a full round, lighting my way and as I went and craning my neck up to see. In the further depths the works became older. Hard boned ridged spines giving away to decrepit cracking leather, split like old wounds and then even further: bundles of parchment yellow as corn flesh, though I was relieved to see that many were properly encased inside scroll tubes. I feared that to touch these was to destroy them so I did not linger much except to remark with awe upon the age and vastness. Did the famed collection of Alexandria hold so much? Imagine the scholars of England finding themselves here!

Then I did imagine those poor scholars here and I laughed a little. 

Dracula knew not the power he had, for surely he would abuse it, the minds of England, or many might fall prostrate and quite happy to trade their souls for only some time and better lighting with these old works.

The beast may would never find himself wanting again and though the scholars too would imagine they’d struck quite the deal even if they left a little lighter of spirit.

Having made that round I can say with genuine amazement that I believe every form of written language and more than I had heard of was to be found within this library. Many were so foreign to me I could not even postulate their origins. 

Had their master truly read each of his works, or did he merely _collect_ ? My own head ached at the thought of the _weight_ of such knowledge might feel like atop ones body. Surely it would not _all_ fit behind ones eyes? 

I returned to the shores of the familiar. Of English, French and German.

The sections cataloged by author but, first specifically by language which simplified matters of my perusal. 

English, for some reason, felt too familiar, so I admired the French section and here it was that a small collection caught my eye. This shelf was not without dust and my fingers marked removal of the books upon which I carefully wiped upon my nightgown so not to mark the inner pages of the book with the corruption.

 _‘_ _Justine, ou Les Malheurs de la Vertu’_

Why this book and none of the others I cannot say except that it was not a large bound book and it was stuffed with yellowing letters which might have drawn my eye.

Upon retrieving it I looked next for a place to settle with it. There were several small alcoves of desks but, beside one window arched window was a sheet draped over what I rightfully took to be a small old canape. Removing the sheet I shook the dust free and arranged myself comfortably, enjoying the window which would give me ample light to read. 

The letters were of some interest but mostly interested in the works at first I put them aside in order to open the little volume.

As I came to understand what it exactly was I was reading I should have snapped the book shut… But insulated, and isolated without concern to be ‘walked in upon’ with heated cheeks I consumed the book fixated, in what I can only describe as morbid fascination at the illicit, brutal acts within.

You see, It centered around a girl, the central character ‘Justine’ who, beginning at the age of twelve seeking to preserve her virtue is by this journey at every turn brought lower.

The first act being adjourning herself to a convent only to be raped and used by the monks which the author details with revelry. With the addition of perverse illustrations It only descends from there as you can imagine. 

There was a certain… Titillation to this despite its barbarous despicable contents which left me both so revolted and yet unable to prevent myself from continuing to the end. My breasts though still aching were forgotten during this elopement and soon remembered as I brought the book closed. Unable to help myself I checked to make sure the light of day was still strong and found myself at the same shelf to inspect its sisters.

in English the rough translations of the two others I retrieved were two:

_Philosophy of the bedroom,_

_Juliette_ _._

Here as well there were letters that I set carefully aside, minding to be careful to match the book they’d been returned to. 

Juliette seemed the most sensible sequel and I found it to be in essence the reverse of Justine. Juliette unlike Justine (her younger sister point of fact) accepts her depravity and as such is (unlike her sister who hold desperately to ‘virtue) is _rewarded_.

Then in Philosophy in the bedroom the author engages the reader openly in his preface which I quote here by my best memory:

> _"Lewd women",_

he writes _,_

> _"let the voluptuous Saint-Ange be your model; after her example, be heedless of all that contradicts pleasure's divine laws, by which all her life she was enchained."_

He then urges _"young maidens"_ to copy Eugénie:

> _"be as quick as she to destroy, to spurn all those ridiculous precepts inculcated in you by imbecile parents"_

Feeling quite called out I nearly closed that one but reminding myself I _was_ alone and perhaps feeling a little of Lucy’s rapacious influence I continued into the work reminding myself it was merely a disturbing distraction without any moral sway over me. 

To make clear that the content is not merely erotic I will spoil you the ending.

At the book's horrifying climax the young daughter Eugenie, has become corrupted by the efforts of her incestuous father and she spurns her mother who has come to attempt to save her virtue. As punishment to the mothers ‘virtue’ which they so scorn, Eugenie actively participates in her mothers degradation, having one infected with Syphilis rape her and _sewing_ the seed within so that it might fester. 

I shut the book nauseated and disturbed, partially by the fact I had actually endured the filth enough to make it to that despicable end and suddenly in need for cool water and a cleansing back. 

Then the little letters beckoned my attention

They were dated over what must have spanned the authors life. In some he marked he was _imprisoned_ for its very writing! 

My mind at this stage was quite ‘full’ as you can imagine but these letters were written with personal devotion and admiration to my very Host, and the author on several occasions _begged_ the creatures presence!

‘ _Consider me but an apprentice offering you all that I may, my despicable patron and consider too what we might enjoy in one another's company!’_

Revolted at this I could not bear to continue. For it is one to be vaguely in fear of all horror that may come, but another to have it forecast in vivid horrific detail the true depravity one might have wrought upon them. Quickly I put the letters back in their places and moved to return the books.

As I did, however I could not help but note that my selection was quite obvious. For it was marked by the dust, or rather now its 'lack' in this specific space.

Fear possessed me throbbing as my breasts still throbbed. Absolute terror eclipsed my mind that my Host would discover my delve into this... _Aberrant pornography._

I chewed my lip imagining the revelry in my Host to discover my having chosen only the most (for god I could not imagine **worse** , but perhaps that is still my failing) **illicit** works to read, and that in discovering this he might wish to enact some such horrific acts upon me seeing it as some invitation. 

The problem I surmised was the _dust._ I streaked my hand across the shelf to ‘cover my trail’ as one might say but this too only seemed the path more glaring.

It would all have to go. For should there be an obvious centralization to the cleaning it would inevitably lead one to realize one to focus upon it and thus lead back to the shame in which I sought to bury. 

My hand filthy at the first swipe I realized I required in some part proper cleaning implements and set myself to finding them. There were cabinets, in which I found some tools, though they were as dusty as the books I sought to clean. Shaking them out I set myself as a terrier after rats to the task, and worked to a lather by the singular image of the dangerously smug expression in which he would level at me should he discover this and the implications I may find myself having to explain, but ultimately helpless to any depravity he may wish to inflict. 

* * *

This physical exertion was of such a preoccupation that that time slipped by me and I finished three shelves, the French, German, English and Russian. Risking even my _life_ by the rickety ladders so that by the time I realized the sky outside was darkening I was filthy and sweaty and now encrusted in a filthy nightgown.

A new terror.

The Count coming upon me now as such. 

My exhaustion deserted me as I veritably tossed the cleaning implement aside and as if the hounds of hell snapped at my heels, _ran_ in retreat to my rooms.

The distance blurred, my memory so fixated upon the physical it seemed as if there was only stretches of stone, the pained throbbing of my breasts and the pain which lanced at each strike of my feet against the stones through the all too thin slippers to which I knew the soles would soon be blackened and tender. The next instance was the arrival to my door, my lace ribbon marking the floor which I paid no mind to as I burst within it slamming the door shut. 

Breathing like a winded animal my body positively vibrated with the violence of the energy I had extracted. Still the light was falling and I was not relieved. I was both filthy and sweaty and I was certain to be expected at dinner. Could this be avoided? I was not sure, I stripped rather quickly and though the water was unclean it was better than naught and I sought to wash, sloshing and biting back the shock of the cold as I submerged myself and scrubbed with some scrap I had utilized previously to remove the grit of my nails, face and neck and the heat from beneath my arms and between my legs. I did not submerge my hair, only wiped my face very carefully and leapt back out, dripping and laced it in which I might brush out the dust while hanging my head with quick strokes from root to tip after unworking it from the braid which had held it. 

Though I knew it was only by my imagination I felt as if each beat of my heart was a step he neared my door, which upon any moment he may either knock, or _worse_ simply enter to find me now in my prone state of undress. My nightgown needed washing badly and so I sought the dress of the previous night. 

The coolness of the water had given some reprieve of the pain in my chest but upon my attempt to dress (attempt being key) I found myself in new, most _dire_ straights. First in the agony of applying my corset I was forced to loosen it considerably and there after being able to finally get up my chemise, bloomers, stockings and petticoat at the time to done the dress I found it to be entirely disagreeable and far too impossible for me to fit within as if my chest had increased in size. I daresay they had. But perhaps he had given me a dress too small. Blasted Vanity of Victorian fashions!

I had a single reprieve in my luggage still. My blouse and skirts. Comparably looser, I donned them quickly, feeling ever more the weight of the steps I was sure were nearing. The light outside was becoming pink and orange, soon to fade.

It is very humorous now describing all this but I assure you the panic which motivated me at the time was the most genuine. 

The last- my black belt- I fastened with my quaking hands, harking for that fated step I was certain was arriving.

Silence.

No knock.

No sign of life.

I collapsed back on the bed feeling a quaking fool and mocked myself already so warm again after my exertions, the cold of the bath seemed to have created the marked opposing effect within my body which was now altogether producing too much heat. Cool air licked my brow and I sighed at the flutter of the breeze as I closed my eyes. Relived the window was open though I could not remember having done so myself. I laughed a little despite the pain.

* * *

Finally a knock, quite polite and I sat up, cringing at the pain which lanced from the stiffness of the corset straining against the need for my breasts for more space then they had right to possess and was forced to roll to my side awkwardly to sit up and to only take half measured breaths. I realized as my hair flared up around me I’d forgotten to put it up and it was still hanging loose and fluffy, curling indolently. 

“Yes?” I said pawing at my hair absently looking around for a tie of some kind. Instead I spotted the dirty discarded gown right before the door. I grabbed at it, but did not manage to tuck it away as the door swung open and was quite foolishly caught awkwardly rising with the gown and by instinct as a child might if they are caught doing something naughty hid it behind my back flushing.

“Good evening, Miss Harker.” I could see him take note of my distress which only compounded it. I was flushing all over. I imagined as red as a tomato or an apple my whole body throbbed in a mixture of pain to the leaden weights in my breast and by that sugaring beat driving like the unrelenting drum of some savage people. “Are you quite all right?” He tipped his head to try and catch what I clutched and realized how foolish this all was, so I held it up.

“It needs to be washed.” I said sounding a perfect _vazey_ fool. And then like a church-bell. “I was caught up cleaning and got quite dirty…” He plucked up the piece to observe the dusty marks all over.

“I see you have been busy.” His face bore the suspicion of some **skilamalink**. Could he know what I’ve been up to? Or was this only his usual look? I was certain to be darkening to a shade nearer the sky, some purple now rather than red. 

“The library was **offensively** dusty.” I continued, pulling the fabric from his grasp eager to busily hide my face and my increased agitation by turning away shaking the gown a little before draping it over a chair. He stepped very near behind me and my hairs rose.

“ **Why** ,” He asked _too_ close, yet I feared to turn just to see how close. “Is your heart running like a locomotive?”

“Have you ever heard a locomotive?" I challenged

He laughed

"- and I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Even as my heart made space up my throat for lack of it in my breast. 

“ _Deceit_ , I did not mark as your character Sophie.” My hair rose like needle pricks as he continued. “You know I have a way of discovering things and I will take particular interest in finding what little tricks you have been up to.” I held my breath. “But rest easy for now, If you’ve been naughty I’ll wait until the extents of your crime are known before leveling suitable punishment.” Peaked by this I finally got the courage to turn with arms crossed and heated with indignant feeling.

“Considering there is nothing to find beyond a _cleaner_ library I’m sure you will find yourself quite disappointed!” I declared, vexed by this suggestion of punishment or and any other ' _malarkey_ ' and this finally drawing me out of my embarrassment enough to be dragooned to dinner.


	6. April 15th 1897

_Sophie Harker's Diary_

_April 15th 1897_

_Continued_

* * *

> _“Considering there is nothing to find beyond a cleaner library I’m sure you will find yourself quite disappointed!” I declared, vexed by this suggestion of punishment or and any other ' malarkey ' and this finally drawing me out of my embarrassment enough to be dragooned to dinner._

* * *

My little secret kept for now I was now burdened only with the discomfort of my breasts which plagued me. I did what I could in attempting to keep it from marking my countenance while it being simultaneously at the forefront of my mind. I fear I botched this badly too, for I had never been quite good at that capability to ‘ _deceive_ ’ as he put it. That was a trait of _his_ character. 

I expected some comment to the matter, but it was that we descended quietly to the dining room where a suckling pig was presented as my meal gleaming and juicy with an apple stuck through its mouth so that I was distracted by what I anticipated to be a worthy and pleasant distraction from those two hot stones of pain which continually kept my breath shallow. 

He allowed me to set to myself without much disturbance, a piece of reading material being his specific mode of preoccupation beyond serving me my wine. Always red and always slightly different in age and effect; this one had the strong notes of oak and apple, with spiced notes I could not place and was quite well paired with the meal. 

This was a pleasant formality allowing for my ‘human needs’ to be met, though I wondered as I enjoyed the fat suckling how soon it was to be that I was the one with the apple in my mouth. I took note now too of a crate within the room which heightened my particular wondering of this. Noting the shreds of packing materials peaking from the cracked open lid.

“It’s quite good.” I remarked politely my movements slower and more considerate but my eyes lingered upon the crate, admittedly uneasy.

“Don't worry its not for **you** ,” He remarked strangely without looking up from his papers but seemed to know the object of my interest as if he read my mind. A chilling thought. “I received that recently, but I had not thought to unpack it considering It will soon have to be _repacked_. Then it occurred to me it may bring some interest this evening.” He closed his book, to which I had not caught the title of, and rose in that easy way he did, apparently intending to satisfy my curiosity. 

From the crate he produced a smaller box, though still quite large and within that.

A gramophone.

“I had a feeling you would appreciate it, and was hoping you would consider joining me in a dance.”

“Oh.” The sound fell out, unconvinced.

“I will need some practice.” He continued and offered his hand. I was still very uncomfortable but it was impossible I felt, to appropriately refuse him so I took his hand as it was offered and tried to keep the wince from my face as he pulled me into position of a waltz which I am quite sure I was to find he needed very little aid in.

“There is a Polka version I think, if you prefer.” He teased in a half whisper leaning to my ear, and I wrinkled my nose, and shook my head altogether a little too seriously. Knowing that kind of dance by which the movements were quite fast and almost _leaping_ I cringed.

“Something, gentler perhaps?” I requested placed my hand in his in a manner familiar to me. One within his hand, the other at his shoulder while he took my waist. 

“I can’t say you strike me as someone who requires gentle handling Miss. Harker.” I pressed my lips, restraining a smile in order to glower which hardly passed.

“And what _pray tell_ gave you such an impression?” There was something wicked in his eyes at this and I narrowed my own.

“Its a compliment.” He assured me without giving answer to that secret innuendo.

“Even if that **was** the case,” For which I would not admit. “I care for the consideration as much as any woman.” He briefly turned away to begin the music and resumed his place, pulling me into step before it even began. Then it did, crackling slightly as if it was working out the wrinkles of the sheet music in that funny way.

The music was strange in the air, hovering displaced between the heat of the fire and the cooler interior were which stretched up to the vaulted ceilings, the music seeming to hover like a find mist and echo back strangely from the high arches.

“Is there something repressing that constitution I find so favorable?” Ah, and here the snake finally revealed itself about my ankles, having been only invited there by myself. I looked down at my feet as if I might see it there and shake him of, but it was an ample excuse not to answer, if only he would have permitted it. “Looking down is terrible form.” He chastised.

“And yet _you_ claim to need practice!” I muttered, flustered and still trying to bite back my discomfort. It was strange to be touched by him in so rigid of form in such a way that it was almost proper, yet somehow this only made it a stranger and subversive encounter. For I was too aware now of that line and how quickly it might be crossed. His hand cooled my feverish one, my long fingers clasped dispassionately. 

“A small deceit.” He said, “In order to secure you.” The hand at my waist a gentle pressure.

“Ah.” We were spinning as one does for these dances and the pain was ever present. Keeping myself so Rigid, I was keeping up but was tiring quickly and I kept my focus upon his chest, attempting to block out the whirling of the room and the increasing throbbing.

I might make it to the end I thought. But we spun.. And spun.

It was then a sudden shock to feel warm wetness creeping at my front. Spreading with a peculiar swiftness upon my chest.

My step hitched and I looked up, sensing that something perhaps had dropped down upon me, perhaps water from those high ghostly arches above me… 

But there was only the Count, my dancing partner who seemed to catch my genuine bewilderment and was only matched by his own. His dark brows drawing together as his gaze traced down and we swayed to a stop, his nostrils flaring delicately. 

The warmth spread, and my gaze followed his, my having leaving his to bring to the spot attempting to understand. 

Beneath the blouse, the wetness surged up, and those two swollen stones throbbed still. A terror of mind made me fear suddenly that I was somehow _bleeding._ Gushing _blood_. My hand flew to my breast, my eyes down in shock expecting crimson, but though there was dampness, it came away like water, something soaking through from beneath. At first there was just confusion and then as my breast throbbed, horrific understanding.

“Oh god.” Humiliation was swift and crushing, like a vice about my throat I snapped about myself crossing my arms about myself and turning away. I thought of nothing but escape then, nothing but retreat.

I tried to leave but he stopped me, securing me by the sides of my arms..

“Please don’t!” I shouted, my voice a ringing clashing cymbal to the now garish music, joined then by his wondering kind of laughter, like a shock of ice as he withheld me from my escape

“No! Don’t run away,” There was the edge of excitement, feverish to his murmur, and secured by his grip I could not hope to.

Hot tears of shame burned my eyes as even more heat gushed from beneath my dress.

Was this not Justine's same betrayal? For all she strove for goodness and virtue, she was _defamed_ and brought low by **violation** at each turn. Despite the pain I pulled my arms tighter about myself. 

His hand remained on my arms but he circled to face me, I felt it by the trace of his hand and the sound of his voice despite my tightly shut eyes.

“Don’t cover yourself.” He exalted again, not forcing my arms apart but ever so gently from where he now touched my forearms applied a coaxing pressure delivered by his velvety voice. 

"Please, this is awful." I begged, I felt as if I might go mad, that I could not bear this humiliation as I had born the others.

"No, its beautiful- Let me see you, in your _weeping virtue_.”

My shame echoed hollowly with the music, which soon stopped and unable to seek escape I turned my head away. Allowing him to pull my arms free and spread them so that he might see the ‘weep’ of them swelling beneath the fabric of my blouse, hot tears soon joining the stains.

For you see I had come into milk.

Was this gods punishment? That, my breasts wept now with nourishment for a child who starved two days ago!

His gaze disseminated me to my basest parts piercing the veil of my humiliation and drinking me in gluttonously. I tried to swallow a weak sob which quaked up and burned at my throat, where it finally burst into a contraction and I swallowed around it. Despising him but also myself all the more. 

Finally he released my arms and I dared look at him to see that very look I’d known to expect: smug and sensuously hungry. He leaned in, hands leaving my arms and skimming to my hips.

“If you desire a nurse mate, I will all too gladly attend to your discomfort.”

“Bastard.” I hissed and struck him one blow to the chest. Loathing him. “Whatever you did to me likely produced this!” I accused madly, for I didn’t even really believe it, I wished it was to be true. But he denied me this too, laughing.

“Not an effect by me I’m afraid. Though I have never seen such a reaction, you are _intact,_ are you not Sophie?” Mortified I shot him a horrified expression of indignation. “Yes, I thought so.” He surmised.

"Gods punishment most likely." He snorted in disdain and disapproval of this notion.

"No likely the little runt stimulated a very **natural** biological response, though I've never witnessed something quite so _provocative_. Is there pain?” I was oddly soothed by this clinical explanation, for it made much more sense and, affording me firmer ground which to walk I regained my sanity a little by that alone.

“They feel like stones.” I admitted and sniffed pitifully, wiping my tears away and again removing my eyes from him.

I was lifted suddenly, becoming weightless, and I gasped startled and flinching to grab something secure which was of course my host who had swung me up into his arms to carry me as a bride. 

“What are you doing?” I squeaked, perturbed more by instinct than anything else for I could do nothing either way.

“Don’t fuss.” He instructed and though I was not soothed, I was subdued.

* * *

I found myself carried to that all too familiar sitting room where he placed me upon the Canape. Uneasy by his silence and his fixed look upon his eye as I settled back from his grasp. He neither stood nor sat. and Instead lingered before me half hovering where he sat me, with eyes drawing me in as they had before to that welcoming vacuum, that alluring look which offered both sanctuary and pleasure. His hand came to cup my cheek which only was a little tender now, and stroked my lip with his thumb.

“Let me taste you Sophie.” He asked and followed with the sensual press of his mouth against mine. I struggled against the eagerness of my body's response for which his mouth called, the intensity in my breasts, the ache throbbing almost now to pained arousal as his mouth consumed mine, tongue seeking the heat, imploring for more than this taste. His hand skimmed that tightness of my bodice and I flinched withdrawing. 

“N-no.” I said despite that lurid desire coiling in me, despite the respite offered in his eyes which darkened in frustration. 

Here then was his nature, for denied by my words yet helpless bodily to stop him. He reached behind me, his hand moving up my back. With the jerk of movement he tore the fabric of my shirt, and dug to the corset below. Beneath his hand it seemed to fly apart, splitting at the laces as if cut by a dagger. 

There was an aching release of pressure but a redoubling of panic. 

“I thought what I desired mattered to you!” I shouted, attempting to clutch the fabric which I knew would soon be torn by force.

“Consider it taken under advisement.” He answered in a voice thick with anticipatory desire. “Turn around the necklace.” He instructed then. I hesitated, taking a shuddering breath and a few more tears leaking out before obeying. 

Feeling for the object and as one might turn a mirror away from one's sight I turned God's sight away from me, allowing the cross to hang heavily from my back and not between my breasts as was I fear to become familiar to me.

“Good girl.” He pulled apart my garments like tissue paper and threw them into the fire which brightened. Consuming the fabric hungrily as he hungrily drank in the aching engorgement of my breasts, fluid no longer flowing but sticky and uncomfortable, the apples hard and flat, stretched by this invasive swelling. It all happened so quickly I had not yet begun to cry had I might given a moment to move beyond numb shock.

“You know I’ve never tried this before.” He descended fully, coming to kneel between my legs, which to get nearer he pushed up my skirts and jerked my hips, pulling me at an angle so I might be closer. Much as he did days before in the bedroom. He took my right breast into his mouth, cupping the breast as he did.

There was pain, but my body responded eagerly to this latching, coaxing suck and what there was of discomfort was layered by this strange sort of sense of soothed completion despite myself. 

After an eager draw as I began to feel the flow and felt the contraction of his swallow.

He stilled and withdrew with half lidded contemplation as one might roll a tester of wine upon their pallet.

“That's quite pleasant actually. Not like blood but there is something _palatable_ , some life essence and a certain flavor that's distinctly _yours_.” I returned his gaze, hateful and betrayed and his hand moved to my thigh. A cool invader working up my skirt to my thigh making me squirm with a fresh burst of distress.

“I can smell your arousal Sophie, can we not… Enjoy each other?” He asked, with that milk dew upon his lips and those heavy eyes. Instead of just tears I was angered immensely by this, by him. For all the world I didn't hate anything more profoundly than I despised him.

“My body may not be mine to control but that does not mean I will welcome this… _perversion_.” In response his eyes still locked upon my face as his tongue gleaming and pink extending to lewdly circled the pink swell and hard nipple eliciting a gasp as the sensation, sang. His chuckle puffed air upon the sensitive flesh.

“Then I suppose you will have to enjoy it _unwillingly_ , but we both know you’ll enjoy it all the same.” He said, bowing now to suckle. Helpless I was lost to the torrent of feeling, loathing but unable to deny the truth in his words, my belly was tight with the aching pleasing cramp and I fought the urge to squirm. My hands first balled into fists by my side soon clenched around his head as he drew a long suck, his hand working the breast as one might work the udder of a cows teat to coax the milk into his hungry mouth. 

My thighs squeezed tight, attempting to close, but only succeeding in clamping at his sides where he was nestled. My body and my breaths shortened as his hand stroked down the lengths of my thigh as one strokes a beloved pet. Drawing as he did so, the stocking and slipping higher, _within_ the inner part of my thigh beginning again to work upwards. I could not help the buckle of my body, like the quake of a racking sob, only tied to that terribly pleasing and maddening ache seemingly tied to the suckling draws and the way his fingers circled my flesh working up… Up. 

I felt a heat and dampness growing at the crux in which he diligently worked towards, fabric barred his ascent and I shuddered to feel them torn away from my body like the tissue of my blouse. 

It was the slow agony of Moonlight Sonata played against my flesh with all its lurid beauty, agony, despair, and dark anticipation.

His hand had worked to the apex of my thighs and as he touched me ‘there’… It is almost impossible to describe, there was bodily delight at this new pressure that was all at once maddening as it was ecstasy. His hand working almost, _rolling_ to stimulate in such away that my body clenched to the point of pain and clutching his head I squeezed him all the tighter as this rollicking madness and desire becoming consummate _need_ building.

Was I Justine then or Juliet? The virtuous punished for it? Or the sinner meeting her delight? 

I made a shamelessly profane noise, but I was not to wake from this dream as I had in the library so long ago where he had pinned me. For this was not that luring devouring of my mind, only my body. And here I was present mentally without the shroud of confusion his eyes had once spelled for me. 

In a strange way, I now consider, that _hypnotism_ , if that's what it might be, had offered some kind of respite. And had been perhaps on his part almost a kindness. A removal of my inhibitions which stood in the path of his desire. Lacking that he now tore through them and here was just myself, Justine and Juliette, the virgin and the coaxed whore who bucked under the adept motions of the monster who could employ his skills of seduction so artfully and I was left without the psychological comfort of submission. Here it was body and mind clashing, and the body was winning.

A queer sublimation was building within my body, which bucked like that of a rebellious unbroken filly. Squirming under the calm steady hands of an experienced trainer. I did not know what peak I was striving for only that I was becoming more desperately near it at that moment, my hands clasped his head my fingers, knotting into the thick black hair clutching at the root as I drove arched my body, but into his mouth and hands.

The sudden departure from his mouth from my breast was an unbearable cruelty.

“No.” I whimpered despite myself and he laughed again at me, his hand still working as his eyes delighted in consuming the heat of my pleasure heady with his own goading satisfaction for a moment before taking my other breast and bringing himself again to feed from the second as he had the first. “Oh please, oh please.” He sucked hard, and his hand merely rolled again, but my hips gyrated, my thighs squeezing about his body, everything as tight and aligned, my back arched like a bowstring as the final strum, the final note plucked sent me finally cascading into over that edge.

A profound ecstasy overwhelmed me. 

It was like… an Immutable silence of spirit... A rapture so complete that it became an absolute amnesia of self and in place of the void of feeling, was an absence of pain so _perfect._ So Complete, that it was the closest one might imagine being bathed in the love of god himself.

An ecstasy of bodily absolution, I was held in suspension from time as this power moved through me, rollicking and throbbing like the most exquisite chorus, my body a divine instrument which the notes passed. 

It was peace that tasted of eternity but disappeared like a dream disappears from one's mind upon waking.

Though resonating through me it grew ever duller as the noise of something travelling quickly passes, and I helpless and shuddering was left throbbing by its remission and returned back to my bodily senses.

* * *

I was still wrapped about him. His head still bowed suckling, though his hand finally ceased its coaxing motion and withdrew to my outer thigh and behind my hip as if to keep me locked to him. My body hummed with the dulcet ineffable depth of languorous satisfaction and contentment, distress of my mind was a distant call, gaining speed, but not yet arrived. 

Strange then I found I was crying. Not any agitation of the mind then I think, more like the expression of milk at my breast, and the lurid slick feeling between my thighs. Merely another expression of excess, another relief.

Tears like April rain, easy and sweet, releasing down my cheeks.

His mouth came away and I was pulled seamlessly down from the canape and into his lap. Straddling his legs and brought into an embrace, his hands moving up the naked exposed flesh of my back to my shoulders as he kissed my neck. Was this the moment? And if it was, did I mind or welcome it? Where had my spine gone? My certainty, my resolve? It was melted, _dissolved_ and in its place was boneless and a queer tenderness as I continued to weep those gentle tears like a child might cry softly. He parted to look at me, his hair distempered and askew and his mouth flush and dewy with those dark intoxicating eyes still heady with hunger and which now fixated upon this new nourishment, the tears. Can there be a more erotic visage of a man than this? I was a chalice to his thirst and nothing could have been more seductive, or confusing to me in that moment for how it lured me sweetly to the point of feeling strange affection.

He himself seemed absorbed in some tenderness, but perhaps I was merely confusing this as such, in the heated glow of that tide which I was now washed ashore of. He cupped my cheek to bring me to him, to his mouth which captured gently these little drops with his lips and tongue as he'd done upon the turret lewdly, he now supped tenderly. 

He felt like a man, almost warm and brought to breathlessness from passion. This too brought another small ache and fresh sweet sorrow to find their escape from beneath my lashes. He traced his way back to kiss the prancing surge at the hollow of my neck. I was suddenly sleepy, and my mind erred, as boneless as my body.

“When you kill me, will you grow younger than you are even now?” I do not know from where this question arose, or if even it might cause him anger for the distraction. He was still enjoying my body with his lips and for a long moment I thought perhaps he meant to ignore me and considered that to be as well when finally his words hummed against my skin.

“You know no one ever asked me that?” He said, not angry or displeased but almost thoughtful and with the slow sentimentality as I might imagine two speaking docile after lovemaking. “But no, I seem to be fixed to the point in which I died.”

“That is to say you were a man once?” I was earnestly interested to discover this, though perhaps it was silly to admit it I'd had either avoided the concept completely until then.

"What did you think I was?" He asked an I felt rather silly but rallied.

"Mephistopheles? Evil in the flesh." I suggested and this pleased him and the rumbling laugh was shared through our bodies.

"Mephistopheles was nothing but a fickle spirit." He said and continued. "No, not quite. I was living and breathing once. Even I suppose, eating in _just_ such a way from another woman a very very long time ago… In many ways some things haven’t changed.” And he cupped my breast which though still tender were not nearly so heavy or dense but in fact relieved. “I still do enjoy playing with my food.”

A lance of pain, though my tears had now subsided. A reminder of the coldness which held me, the coldness of stone too and this echoing hollow place where I was the last thing alive.

“Do you know the most unbearable thing about you?” I was returning to my torment now, my confusion. Conflicted between despising him and adoring the languid feeling as he held me... Of feeling his fingers stroke my back and the glossiness of his hair which begged fingers to neaten.

“Tell me.”

My first deep and easy breath was somewhat shuddering.

“You're charming.”

“I see.” He kissed now above my right breast.

“It's only that when one expects to be murdered, villainy is expected but it's quite another cruelty to be _charming_ about it.”

“Shall I bring home more babies?” I felt my mouth tugging down at the corners and the first urge to leave overtook me, he must have felt the tension of the thought in my body or read my mind because his grip flexed about me as if to let me know he had no intention of allowing me to escape. 

“That is exactly the sort of thing I need to be reminded of. What does that make a person when they can be charmed by someone despicable enough to eat children?” That was my own question my own torment, laid bare. That I could be brought to desire... to be comforted or charmed by such evil. What did that make me?

“I don’t eat them.” He denied tartly, only puzzling me but sighed, continuing without explaining. ”And you mustn't blame yourself, you know. I’ve had a long time in which to practice, this particular art.” There was that wicked smile which still managed to coax a tug in the deepest part of my belly. “-Though admittedly this was an exceptionally excellent first-”

“ _You_ don’t-?” It was with queer revelation that it struck me right then that my fathers ghost was not so ghostly, and the small puzzle pieces which Marianne had left clicked into place along with that marked sensation I had felt earlier that I had not been alone here after all. _Help us_. 

"Your not the only pet I keep Sophie." He said against my flesh and my skin crawled faintly. A pet he fed babies. I did not press because I feared he'd gain some scent of where my mind went and instead I thought of another question.

“How long, have you been alive or… Dead is it?” I asked, returning his look only a little taller than him as I sat upon his lap.

“ **Undead**.” He corrected then continued with a thoughtful knit. “The years were more difficult to mark then but I must have died in… 1476, or 1477. It was winter, I remember that.” 

I had not really been expecting this, my mind gaped at the sudden depth of that admittance.

“But that's… nearly _four hundred years_.”

“Give or take twenty or so.”

The mood changed from the sluggish intimacy to something less unified. My mind returned with it the feeling of shame and dirtiness now at my bodies lingering feelings of enjoyment.

“Will you take me to bed?” I asked, hoping I would not be forced to walk the cool halls in such a terrible state of disarray. It occurred to me distantly I now lacked basic undergarments thanks to the violence of his desire. 

“Yes.” He said and I was lifted by his easy fluid unnatural strength, my legs around him almost able to hook at the back. It was intimate, this closeness in a way which the bridal style of carrying lacked.

I remembered my father carrying me in such a way to bed and I wondered queerly if he too remembered this as he carried me, and a small knot of anguish formed in my throat like swallowing around a stone and I tucked my head to the darkness offered by the curved of his neck feeling only rise and fall his stride. 

I did not notice my room had been reached until I was being lowered and my eyes opened to receive the soft glow of lamp and the cool of a room unlit by fire. I unlaced myself and sought refuge shivering beneath the sheets. My necklace tugged reminding me of its position hanging opposite and I fingered the chain as Dracula began starting a fire in which would keep my room warm from the night. My window, I noted now was closed although I could not remember fastening it, It did not seem to matter though Dracula rose to draw the curtains closed. 

“There will be crates soon delivered as I begin preparation to move. The gypsies will be attending them.” He told me and I was uncertain why. Was he concerned I would speak to them? He seemed to notice my soiled night dress as he moved returned to where I lay. “I can have some items brought for you to wear.” He commented picking up the ruined garment.

“There are times when I think simple brutality would be more endurable than this.” I told him.

“Well I suppose I might enjoy seeing you left mostly undressed.” He said and I could not help but study his face as if searching for that mark of that dizzy age I'd first seen. Remembering now the feral creature I first laid eyes on. Apparently I’d trailed off into thought because he was giving me a strange look and I realized I hadn’t answered. 

“Why are you doing this?” But then I knew that didn’t I? I sighed then and wiped my tired eyes “Never mind, I know that.”

“Then why do you keep asking?” He asked sounding only a little exasperated but not seriously so as he came to perch upon the side of the bed as my father once used to before reading me a story or tucking me in.

“I think because I keep hoping for a more endurable answer, the waiting is… It's own dread.”

“First not enough time, and now too much?” He chuckled and the bed depressed with his weight as he made himself comfortable by my side. My listlessness would not abate. Too much was occurring and all of it left me so much more confused. The terror and violence brought against my body clashed with that very sames bodies anticipation for more. My mind felt frayed and I think I was just desperate for something solid, for worse or for better. Some certainty in this mire.

“Are you… Waiting for something which pleases or displeases you?”

“Is it conceivable that I am merely enjoying your company until it is no longer practical?” He offered and this was an answer in itself. I found despite this I was in fact not anymore comforted at all and looked away from him. At once terribly homesick as the room became all at once vividly foreign to me as if it was my first night there.

“Then it is to be defined by days…” Why was I so desperate for this limitation? Why must I stretch to feel the edges of my confinement when I might turn in turn in the endless dark oblivious until that last sweet moment of ignorance. “Will it be cruel or kind? slow or painful?”

“It might be kind, yet slow if done properly. It would be a crime to take you quickly.”

“If I was so precious it would be a crime to take me at all.” There it was all: my morbid self pity and vanity all at once. 

I was not expecting his answer which came with a kind of bitterness of his own.

“No, out there you would be wasted, you’d shrivel, or rot or worse… Be forgotten by time, **ruined** before you’d ripened and discarded.”

“How easy it is for you to distill what would be for me an entire life to live between those moments, of love, monotony... Surprise!” I hated how easily he could demean what he was taking from me. But his eyes quickened with a passion I was not expecting and all almost tenderness.

“Yet there will be that end all the same. A waste.” 

“Was it not you who said it was the end that was inevitable, only what is written between is of import? Yet you take my agency and mock me for trying to delude me I have any. A waste for who I might ask? Not for me,” There was that deep rooted bitterness softening his eyes as he looked upon me and I could not help but be… Stirred by that in some way despite myself. In those eyes there was a glimpse of a long dark road and the chill of some deep ache never to be soothed. 

“I have been alive _four hundred years_ , Sophie, and will be alive likely four hundred more. And you, after _four hundred years_ have given me some very fine firsts… And once I take you I will carry you with me until the end, perhaps to the end of all things.” It struck me that his reverence was genuine, but it was the reverence spoken softly as one speaks of someone already dead, and this thought stirred to bloom the seeds which had been laid within me to fruit.

“Is everything already dead to you? Simply because of its inevitability _to_ end and the seeming inevitability for you to continue?”

“Yes.” he said with the slowness of one never having it elucidated as such but finding the truth in it and he shifted closer to me upon the bed. I could see by his mouth he meant to kiss me, and I accepted this kiss. So much for my reluctance. So much for any goodness. It was such a good feeling though. Were all kisses like his? His were each different as if with each he bore a separate intention in mind and with it his mood.

This was a tender thing, his gentle before parting from mine to move lower to my jaw and lower still. Ever with reverence and I sensed the shift of his intentions and in my body sounded a mixed thrill of alarm as if some part of me sensed his dark hunger and responded to it the way an animals instincts might. Dread, mingled with curiosity, my breasts tingling strangely as if for some anticipation remembered but forgotten.

I felt the pulse of my flesh meet his lips which parted and felt the gentle press of teeth upon the rind of my flesh. 

There was a savage puncture which made me gasp, like ice down lancing into my heart, searing through my neck and deep into my shoulder. I whimpered but the feeling soon changed, a pleasant wave of almost numbness, but nearing a euphoric pleasure spreading liquid up my body. Oh, it was a kind of sweetness. He could not have lingered for more than a moment and my mind was heavy with a sweet kind of mist that threatened to over come my vision. Even the sight of his savage face did not frighten me as I looked upon it. Teeth, and blood marked eyes, my blood blooming like the mark of strawberries upon his lips which he again graced to kiss mine sharing, as it were in my 'flavor' with a languid tongue.

_‘Sleep.’_

It was not spoken, I was sure of it for his tongue was pleasantly engaged. I obeyed that issuance however it came readily. Departing at the last by the feeling of that tongue and the metallic warmth of my own blood.

It is by the next day that I made this account.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warming up for some very sexy chapters.


	7. April 16th 1897

**_Sophie Harker's Diary_ **

**_April 16th 1897_ **

* * *

I drank deep from the well of sleep and found myself in the hours of late afternoon. The windows cool breeze waking me. The air held the heavy sweetness of rain and gloomy promise which made me nostalgic for home. I wrote in my diary after I woke while my mind still held the lingering echoes of the previous day freshest, but I find my mind still caught in that dreamy sort of state I cannot shake. I suspect it has something to do with that deeper kiss, marked only by a soft silver scar I feel every once and awhile at my throat. It was not the only gift he’d left me.

Upon my night stand was a note as well as some tonic and a book. The tonic was a strange watery mix of herbs much like a bitter tisane making me ever more feel the longings of my native land and its tea. Drinking it made me feel a little less groggy and I next took that other little gift and his note to read by the grey cast of daylight afforded by my window.

> _‘I see you were so pre-occupied with cleaning you did not take another companion, I have left this as a suggestion which I hope you will enjoy._
> 
> _-D._

Seeing the book was french felt a dizzy rush of embarrassment and dread which at first was so intense I had difficulty reading the title.

_‘Les fluer des mal'_

I recognized it then as one that he had been reading the previous night himself at the dining table. There were impressions made upon the leather, flowers which I now admired fully and a serpent coiling. It was of the best bindings but not very old, but printed in 1857. Only forty years my senior rather than a hundred. Another first edition.

My heart calmed, though I was left with the dregs of suspicion. He had an entire library to choose from, yet he focused upon the French. Was he perhaps teasing me, knowing of my activities?

There would be no answers to that. I spied upon the little table within my room he’d left a silver platter covered. Inside rather than outside my door. I suppose this was a new liberty as a reflection of our newfound ‘intimacy’.

My limbs ached sweetly in the kind that speaks of a healthy exercise the previous day and I stretched gently and considering all I might do I decided to take up the tray upon my bed so that I might enjoy every luxury life might offer at once: Satisfaction of food and drink, which would indulge my body; **a book** for nourishment of the mind; the sweet damp air and a cosy bed to indulge my languorous mood. 

The cool rainy sweetness from my open window filled the vastness of the room, while I wrapped and settled myself beneath the covers, setting up myself quite comfortably before opening the tray.

What I saw made me laugh out loud.

Papanasi.

Topped by fruit glazed like jewels and sitting within the heavy cream, dimpling it like set gems.

It was graced with three sauces. A fatty white cream I knew to be a sour cream which ran red with jam that scented the heavily moist air with strawberries.

The last was an icing glaze, frosty and breaking over the richly textured donuts crust.

The warm yeasty scent of the bread mingled with this heady berry ambrosia. Fragranting the air like an intoxicating bakery. The sour cream and berries were certain to cut tart through the sweetness and deepen the enjoyment of each bite. Imagining him as I did baking such a thing was just as enjoyable and delightful as the eating of it.

I did not care that my fingers and cheeks grew sticky. I plucked first a tart jewel to sample, rolling the hard berry over my tongue, savoring even the tickle of the harder stem before popping it between my teeth. My mouth watered and ached eagerly, icing whetted my finger and I cleaned this too. The dough crispy outside was inside a spongy cake filled with a soft subtly sweet cheese that with the sauces made an orchestra of delight on my tongue.

Each bite with a different notes to appreciate: the dry crumble of the sugar on the rind of the donuts, the sweet sticky sour jam giving way to the tooth achingly buttery icing which melted upon the heat of my tongue, followed by the plush bread and soft cheese within. 

I ate until my fingers were sucked clean and regretfully, _greedily_ yearned for more, thirsty as I was, I lingered with all those exquisite flavors in my mouth not desiring to yet wash them away with that icy cool water.

I did finally, and also rose to brush myself off and clean my fingers, not desiring to - in my gluttony- mark those pages which now beckoned my interest to observe. There was still a small tray of clean gleaming fruit for me to pick at, which pleased me as I was finding myself still hungry despite being quite ‘physically’ full. 

A symptom of the Counts kiss?

My father thought I eaten less.

I did not then desire to think of my father, his memory is a wound still to me. A shadow in the corner of my mind whose eyes I felt but did not care to meet. I settled myself instead to regard the book.

_**Les Fluer de Mal** _

_(The flowers of Evil)_

A book of poetry.

The poetry within was as beautiful as it was at times grotesque.

I will not share all that I read, for it would be silly to copy all that if found fascinating, instead those I loved I worked over and over into my mind as I lay in hopes to memorize what I might as I am wont to do when I’d like to recall specific lines. I did discover in the pages something potentially 'singular'- a poem marked by a dried clover, which slipped from its pages as I read, marking it I think as distinct from its brethren by my host, though I am uncertain if this marker was left for me to find or was simply forgotten there, abandoned upon a reading long ago.

It is _Semper Eadem_ which I have struggled to translate best:

> _Whence comes to you, you asked, this singular sadness_
> 
> _That rises like the sea on the naked, black rock?"_
> 
> _— Once our heart has gathered the grapes from its vineyard,_
> 
> _Living is an evil. That's a secret known to all,_
> 
> _A simple pain, with no mystery,_
> 
> _As obvious to all men as your gaiety._
> 
> _So abandon your search, inquisitive beauty;_
> 
> _And though your voice is sweet, be still!_
> 
> _Be silent, ignorant! ever enraptured soul!_
> 
> _Mouth with the child-like laugh! Still more than Life,_
> 
> _Death holds us frequently with subtle bonds._
> 
> _Let, let my heart become drunk with a lie; let it_
> 
> _Plunge into your fair eyes as into a fair dream_
> 
> _And slumber long in the shadow of your lashes._

As I read it each word was carried on the sorrowfully cool and damp drafts which sometimes howled forlornly through the stones. Though I might not know if he’d intended to leave the clover as a marker to me I felt as if it was and I was reminded of that tender bruise he’d left upon my spirit as this too impressed its mark upon me and deepened my melancholy.

If Lucy had been here to see me sighing like this she would declare that I’d ‘ _got the morbs!_ ’ Perhaps I did, and what reasons do I have! 

I lay the book down, long after remaining on that page and gazed at the soft light spread upon the sheets of the bed that was not my own and thought about all that I had learned about my host.

Four hundred years of ‘life’. It could not all have been in this place could it?

I thought about what it might truly be like to live for four hundred years. I thought about his cruelties and lack of compassion, I thought about Darwin too. 

I’ve taken my journal now to give my mind some peace and to have a place to organize these thoughts properly:

* * *

He’d asked me once about immortality and of course I gave such a silly answer, but now I sincerely thought about it. Since coming here I’d began to discover that much of who I was, that is ‘ _Sophie Harker’_ is nothing more than a set of constraints in which I lived. Now removed from that rigidity I find myself floundering to maintain the staples in which I considered inherent virtues attributable to my character. Did that make those virtues a lie?

Take ‘compassion’- that virtue which I say with confidence my host lacks- Can compassion exist within the vacuum of eternity? When **you** alone are set aside from the river of time and are cursed to watch it all endlessly flow by, what is left to you but the briefest joys? Who would not desire to claim some ‘small treasures’ from the river as it all bears past you when you know that they will inevitably on their own expire with or without your intervention?

What if- and I propose this delicately- what if Dracula **is** shaped by natural evolution as Darwin described? Perhaps not in a way physically, or in the 'natural way of generations- but his _**mind** _at least. Adaptation dictates that which live and what dies, for him to have survived so long, through times of mobs and terror- would there be any aspect of his character not defined- **honed** \- to the task of his survival?

Distilled by time, can anything that is not advantageous to that survival remain? When would compassion benefit such a creature's survival to any extent?

Is it cruel for the wolf to eat the screaming rabbit alive? Or a mere incidental requirement for the wolf to not care- for if he did he might starve and only those more brutal might continue.

This is all presuming that the Count can indeed die of course and assuming he has merely been clever enough to avoid it.

But even so, are the laws of morality that guide men applicable to a creature that exists outside the scope of natural laws? Can, that is, something not really **a man** be expected to adhere to laws _of men,_ when- likely within the same circumstances- the unrelenting flow to time- those very men may come to the very same conclusions?

With these ruminations I find it difficult to hate him so bitterly. Perhaps that is some machination of his that I might come to think of him this way. Even if it is, is that not only another pitiable marker of what I have above mentioned? He now takes shape in my mind less of a malevolent spirit and more as a supreme predator, shaped by time and survival and in essence - a natural conclusion- an amalgamation of features which have served him well.

I grow quite sleepy now so long in my bed, and I am only by habit a little guilty for staying here so long before I remind myself that it matters very little and I set my pen aside now as I feel sleep pressing its tender kisses upon my lids, impossible to resist.

* * *

** _April 16th 1897_ **

** _Continued_ **

It was to the most pleasant sensations that I woke. Nuzzled, and within an embrace which brought me squarely back to the bed I shared often with Lucy. In my mind this was Lucy, for I was not truly awake and I hummed pleased to run my hands over her arms which were cold to the touch above my covers. I shivered, and groped for the blanket and felt as I did hair tickling my face and lips upon my collar and took a deep sleepy breath.

Something sour, and unwashed. Moldering like bread left out too long.

Suddenly the touch felt less familiar and my mind returned to me slowly. -This certainly couldn’t be Lucy. 

Yet unmistakable- unfamiliar lips pressed against the top of my breasts which then panged, swollen still building fluid.

My eyes flew upon and, as if startled by this the dark head I saw only the top of suddenly jerked up to look at me in equal alarm.

Round dark eyes, standing stark out of a pale almost gaunt face. At first her eyes were wide, as if frightened but then she smiled almost nervously. Her lips drawing back over serrated teeth raising all the hairs of my body and my dread.

My alarm was so great that a cry came up from my throat in earnest brutality and I flinched and drew my arms up around my face with heart pounding in my breast.

There was a kind of movement and with it I felt the creature upon me- to my immense relief- suddenly depart. 

Fixated for a long in terror as I was, when I finally lowered my arms it was to see that I was alone, and my visitor had left so hurriedly that the curtains had been sucked from without my window seeming to follow her departure.

* * *

Her face is scorched upon my vision even now as I shakily recount this. There was something terribly familiar to her but I cannot yet place it.

With dread I realize now all these small strange occurrences which now make some sense: my satin lace upon my door being removed, and my window open or closed when I could not quite remember having done so myself. 

My room had been visited many times before and now as I sit here I feel a hostile lingering presence and uncertainty of each shadow. I believe I will take my diary and that little book and retreat to the library to think more upon this.

* * *

The journey to the Library was far more unnerving than any other. Each noise, each scuttle or howl or grown was now potentially that huntress who bore upon my as I slept. It was some relief to find myself back in the great space and taking my diary I have resumed a place of comfort beside that little window to write and consider all that nags me…

God the window.

Its day out now. She moves about the day! 

But that is not all. My cross too graced my neck, though perhaps it had fallen wayside, but I am certain it hadn't.

What can be the meaning of all this? Is she 'like' Dracula or something else? Could this be some… Some trick by him?

 _'Help us.'_  
  
That is what had been written on that window.

I had thought it was a trick for my father, some distraction to keep him occupied and to engage his good and honest traits that would not let him part willingly without lending some assistance. Dracula had claimed he had pets and of their diet I too know intimately, so that much he’s admitted. 

If she was as he was however... why would not the cross and the day harry her as it supposedly does he? And... is she 'alone' or does had have many more such creatures 'running about'? 

I am filled with too many questions, today is full of them and the greatest of which must be answered soon, before the light falls: Do I tell Dracula?


	8. April 16th Continued

_Sophie Harker's Diary_

_April 16th 1897_

_continued_

* * *

“You know I don’t think I’ve seen it so clean in here in well… a century in the least.” I had stopped writing in favor of a more silent contemplation by the time he announced his arrival. My diary tucked into my side as I ‘lounged’ upon that little old sofa. It was a mingling of feeling in which I saw him, partially relieved, for some part of my spirit was held in suspended agitation for his arrival which was now by his presence alleviated. Now only was the uncertainty and indecision of what, if anything I might say to him and decided for now some small talk was warranted and would make me easier.

“Only several sections, my energy was not so great I’m afraid.” 

“I may have to consider keeping you on at this rate.” He came to my side, where I shifted myself upwards. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like the dead.” This emerged quite without thought and I felt a little stupid but he laughed, and it gave me a reason to laugh as well. “Do you… Sleep?”

“I’m Undead, so I wouldn’t have insight on that, but I do sleep.” An interesting clarification I noted. “ Would you like to know what I dreamt about?” He was in high spirits indeed I realized, some of that boyish energy returning to a lustrous dark look in his eyes.

“I suppose now I must ask.” I replied with mock disinterest, however this did not dissuade him in the least. Before I could move to offer him some space upon the sofa, he seated himself upon the edge and draped his arm over the back with the other near my side so I might be ‘caged’ in by him. My body responded with a flush of heat, my breasts keening at the sharp inhalation as his rather sparkling dark eyes took my vision. He seemed possessed by that _buoyancy_ of spirit that was I admit rather infectious and permitted me to immediately forget all of my previous anxieties and worries.

His eyes were wickedly lustrous and he spoke in a low eager voice.

“I dreamt of something fat and sleek, almost _purple_ and it was really quite large-” Despite myself and my previous melancholy his words stirred my humor and disbelief and I fought back a laugh, realizing he’d been visited by none other than my old friend Obaysche.

“You're just teasing me.” I felt sure of this, he was only telling me back what I’d told him, but he shook his head.

“I would _never_ **lie** about a hippopotamus.” He said very gravely indeed, and he withdrew to make an animated thoughtful gesture. “Now what must I say to make you believe me?” He bought himself a little nearer, nudging my thigh with his side. “Hm… there was something else… You didn’t just see Obaysch that day. You saw something else too.” He was staring deeply into my eyes and I was captured by them, as a moth's wings tap helplessly against a window, unaware of how to free itself, only aware it can’t break free from the strange thing trapping it. 

“Yes…” I remembered. The memory was watered however. Being eight very few things stuck out but he was correct there was something else that I had marked. 

“It wasn’t living through, it was… An ostrich! A _stuffed_ ostrich.” And I remembered as he said it- that great plumed bird, its strange wings up a bit and those long nobby scaled legs. He did remember! Or he remembered as I remembered it. He broke whatever hold was upon his gaze. I blinked realizing his lips were upon mine. Ever pleasantly cool and moving with tender stirring ministrations. 

There was a new manner of intimacy in these affections and it brought me an evocative feeling which bordered upon pain. I took a deep breath, and I realized something of the earth and of the wind.

“Is it to be then that you will soon carry all my memories and thoughts?” My hand moved rest upon his chest. It was not there to push him away, for what was the point? He’d already destroyed even the idea of traditional decorum, this kiss was by extension almost innocent in comparison to those places he’d already forced himself either in violence or coercion..

“The slower I go the more I take, that's why I prefer-”and his lips moved against mine again, “to-” another sweet dip. “Go-” His hand sidled to stroke my hair back from my neck, to skim down my pulse. “ _Slow_.” My pulse, in opposition, was quickening and he was so close he brushed against my breasts he noted my whimper upon my lips, his hand descending to stroke the tender swelling. 

“Did you like it?” He asked and I thought for a moment he meant these ‘ministrations’ however I caught his look and saw he was referring to that volume in which he had brought to me and still so sweetly filled with emotion honesty gushed out uncensored.

“Oh its-” I struggled here to convey my feelings. “-Grotesque and marvelous!”

“You think so? Here-” and he gestured for me to sit up, and I did so, ensuring my necklace was re-tucked away as he then fitted himself in at my back so that I might rest my body against his and his arms encircling me took up the little book in which to open it before both of us. 

“Show me.” He commanded. 

Outside the little window was a scarlet horizon and so this poem to which he turned was fittingly sweet and it brought me back too, to the time days ago upon the turret under that blanket of velvet, so I stopped here upon the poem that was called- Evening Harmony in English, and skimmed my fingers down the lines.

“It reminds me of the night sky you showed me.” I said, feeling a strange shyness at this and was surprised and moved as he spoke in low French, a flutter upon the crown of my head but again I will do my best to translate it into English.

> Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
> 
> The violin quivers like a tormented heart;
> 
> Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!
> 
> The sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar.
> 
> .
> 
> The violin quivers like a tormented heart,
> 
> A tender heart, that hates the vast, black void!
> 
> The sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar;
> 
> The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals…
> 
> .
> 
> A tender heart that hates the vast, black void
> 
> Gathers up every shred of the luminous past!
> 
> The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals...
> 
> Your memory in me glitters like a monstrance!

We remained quiet for several long quivering moments, though his body was totally still, mine was notably louder in our repast: my heart making its little shudders in my chest and the beginnings of a hunger ache deep in my belly which in my mind was becoming a frustrating feeling disturbing the harmony of the moment. Life often gets in the way of itself I find, dampening the best parts except what we polish in our memories where we forget those small contrivances and discomforts.

“Yes, that was a good night.” He said finally and I felt his cold nose nudging my ear, his lips tickling.

“I could do with more of those.” I admitted weakly, shame mingling like a vapor settling in my lungs impossible to forget. 

“That can be arranged.” Despite myself my heart fluttered and I was possessed with the urge to extend my neck to him, like an itch, I felt my breasts and neck prickle where he had kissed previously, and it was such a strong feeling, like the urge to stretch a cramp I began to. The book slipped from his fingers closing and instead crossed my middle hugging me tightly while his nose skimmed down raising my flesh in anticipation. 

He was going to kiss me again and strangely there was nothing more I desired than to feel that pressure of his mouth. For him to dimple my flesh with the jagged valley of his monstrous teeth and press… until like a ripened fruit my flesh might split in that flash of pain and like a fruit crushed the juices might weep and provide some relief that I realized I desired immensely. Was this hypnotism, and his desire or my own? Reclining back I could have slept at once in those arms and be satisfied never to wake again, to feel my heart pound like waves that would grow ever distant and then fall silent.

Instead beneath his hands my stomach rolled in aching displeasure producing a funny little groan and suddenly the mouth upon my neck withdrew.

“Hungry Sophie?” He asked, with such thickness I knew he was speaking around those monstrous teeth, teeth which had moments ago carried sweet prose.

“Ravenous.” I admitted, still hesitating to move.

“We mustn't have that.” He said but sighed as if regretting the intrusion and then, “What do you say to something a little less formal?” I could have laughed.

“Formality? I’ve already forgotten the meaning.”

* * *

It was only upon the way down that I remembered that sore and uncertain topic which I had blissfully forgotten upon Dracula’s arrival and as our walk was a quiet one I was unfortunately able to refresh myself in remembering all that had brought me anxiety before and my answer was still nought clearer. Taking his lead, my arm through his I had not missed that he’d brought that little ‘flower’ of a book along with us and wondered his intentions as he soon brought me up to that little ‘sitting’ room we’d so often enjoyed. 

“Why don’t you start the fire?” He suggested and left me to it. 

I did as he requested and the room spoke in melancholy echoes further dampening my spirits, that vapor shame finally choking me in the absence of my hosts presence which tended to subdue and distract it. 

With the fire going I felt agitated, likely because of a day of general languor and now pent up, desired some more physical exercise so I walked about the room.

Past the corner where my father had leapt out ready to strike me in fear and then gathered me in his arms… past the spots on the floor littered with papers, drawings and maps now neatly upon his desk.

Like a thread pulled I was drawn to them first absently, then with interest. Inspiration striking. Maps of the castle, and a way to the visitor.

But then, why would I desire that? Remembering those awful teeth, and what the lord had said- remembering the _baby_ wasn’t for him.

_Help us._

Yes there had been teeth but also fear when my eyes had happened to open. There had been that too.

I resisted the urge to touch the pages. What if I disturbed them and he discovered that and might seek to destroy my options? Not yet certain or making a plan and desiring some occupation in which to settle myself I found myself at the piano forte. 

“Hello old friend.” I greeted it with a little sigh and sat for a while to amuse myself and still my storming thoughts. I began nothing in particular, much like my thoughts I began several different verses, stopped and started another.

A rattle of silver and dishes brought me up from those thoughts and a strangely charming scene met my attention. 

My Host with a towel over his shoulder, his sleeves rolled as he directed a little serving cart, pulling it in the room having to push it open from behind in order to enter. I rose drawn by hunger to the silver gleam if not simply drawn by the curiously domestic display.

“I hope you don’t mind something simple.” He asked and removed the lid to reveal a platter of meats and cheeses and some gellies and mustards and pickles which made sharp little notes in the air. 

“I suppose I cannot always expect papanasi-” but I smiled and was really quite hungry and pleased.

“Ah you liked that.”

“I licked the plate clean, I’m sure I looked quite revolting.”

“I’ll forgive your eating etiquette if you forgive mine.” He promised with heavy eyes and I had nought to say to that and looked at the tray.

“How shall we-?” There was no proper place to really set such a dish in the room. Only the canape and the small little tables here and there.

“Oh I thought perhaps like a picnic before the fire, I quite liked our arrangement at the Library, would you consider resuming it?

“Yes.” I said simply.

So we did. 

* * *

Though the scenery was slightly different it was much as it was as above in the library. He arranged us upon the floor on the great bear skin rug and with the tray near as well as the wine and glass he settled his back upon the Canape and I was settled back into him allowed to take what I might while he- well he simply seemed to enjoy himself as it were.

“I will be bringing crates up to the Library to begin packing. You can still take whatever you like.” He told me.

“Will that be you or the Gypsies then?”

“I will be dealing with the Library myself - The Gypsies will not be entering the castle directly. They will be among the courtyard and on the grounds.”

“Am I forbidden to speak to them, or they to see me?”

“You can speak as much as you like,” He said and elaborated. “They do not speak English, and have their own customs which you will likely find strange. Would you like to meet them?” I was admittedly taken off guard by the offer, but not disinterested.

“Do they know what you are- are they not frightened?”

“We have our own arrangement that makes them quite _amenable_ to me.” I found all that very interesting but didn’t know what more I could ask specifically and fell into silence.

“I would like to meet them.” Isolated as such it is difficult to comprehend such a thing as ‘seeing’ other people again but it filled me with genuine keenness to do so despite the circumstances. Drawn then into the conversation, I was eager to sustain our conversations. Questions had welled and bubbled in me and now seemed as any to ask them. “You know I realize I hardly know what you are.” I said, acknowledging it myself. “I know you told me you were a vampire, and then that you were undead but I admit I’ve never taken to superstitions or even read many penny dreadfuls.”

“Well it doesn’t come with a guide book and the myths get more wrong than right I find. What do you want to know?”

I licked crumbs from the corner of my lips and chewed a little absently drumming and dusting cracker crumbles too from my fingers. I was quite unable to eat more despite desiring to continue to pick absently. “Did you die in 1447 or did you summon some Devil in exchange for what you are now?” He gave a dry chuckle.

“Would you believe that the last thing I saw was my own headless body?”

“No!” I said aghast in disbelief and twisted to look up at him from my ‘encased recline’ to see if he was clearly mocking me. He wasn’t as far as I could tell as he peered down his nose at me from below those dark thick brows.

“Actually I quite don’t know how or when I got my body back, only that I woke up very, very hungry- luckily there was plenty of Turkish around.”

“You jest surely?”

“You know I’ve never told anyone this?” His had slipped around my very contented and filled middle but it was only a pleasant reminder of fulfillment. And what was I to feel? Special because I was endowed with this great knowledge likely because of his utter confidence I would tell no one? Instead of saying anything I turned more in his lap and conscious of the liberty I was going to take paused.

“Is there- a mark?” I asked.

“I don’t keep mirrors, you tell me.” He said and he pulled his collar free a single button on the tall stiff collar.

Curious and cautious I brought my finger to part the clean white linen. He had pale flesh, textured with soft lines. The apple of his throat bobbed as I moved back the fabric and he raised his neck for me the skin pulling tighter, his head twisting up as if to expose his throat further to me, however it was actually darkened by the cast of the fire. 

It was strange to touch a man in earnest such as this. Silly as it was- to recline passively in a mans arms was altogether a different cry than to boldly stroke flesh. To ‘investigate’ with eyes one thing, but fingers searching beneath the territory of clothing… 

I remembered in a scarlet instant haze my drunken outreach for him upon the turret and how that had invited some reciprocity. What reciprocity would this invite?

But I wanted to know. Was there a faint line there I could just see? My lungs burned as I held my breath which is what caused me to realize I was holding it and with conscious effort I exhaled slowly

“It was lower I think.” He said and I dared not look at him for I knew should I see his eyes I would instantly lose all courage necessary to do what I did then: which was bring my hand to unsecure a second button, fumbling awkwardly at this which seemed to stretch into eternity before the little beastly button came free and I pulled back the high neck to see the flesh over the ridge of his collar bone, the dark hairs now exposed to the firelight and the skin to my sight which I then scoured with my eyes searching.

“Well?” He asked, though not with any urgency or displeasure. If his talk about mirrors was true perhaps he’d really not seen himself in so long that he truly was interested to know what I discovered.

I was about to tell him ‘no’ when by flickering of the fire I saw a thin near translucent line right above his collar bone and at this discovery was caught up completely by the little intrigue and drew my fingers over the flesh. It creased to little shadows easily and so I brushed the backs of my fingers there to keep the flesh smooth so I might see better.

“My god.” I said, hardly believing it myself as I traced the line and felt course through him a little shiver at this.

“What?” He asked, now with a small edge and captured my hand causing me to look up at him.

“There’s a line!” He felt his own neck, however even I having seen it had not felt it as any ridge.

“It's hardly there, but- let me see around!” I declared and he sat up a little straighter to permit this, I shifting to gather my dress so I might comfortably kneel taller as he twisted his shoulder to me. I pulled the collar down and squinted again. Trying to catch sight of it again if it truly encircled his neck.

It was like catching sight of a spiders web. You could see it in a certain light and I caught it again very briefly though my fingers could not sense any difference to the flesh but it was unmistakable to trace it, though a little ragged in some places saw it dip as if the flesh had been torn lower when- _when his head had been removed_.

At any distance other than this intimate one it would have been quite impossible to catch it. I traced it half way round to the ridge at his spine before I was confident it went round the whole of him before I withdrew and observed him from this new height. My hands resting upon the bare flesh of his neck at either side below the collar, his stillness all the more surreal to the touch, amplifying some instinctual part that was made uneasy by him.

“It is true then, but-” and I wondered aloud at this. “But did you somehow regain your body or merely- grow another like a-a cutting of a plant?”

“You know I never thought of that, they do say I was buried in Snagov, but if I remember correctly I was killed between Bucharest and Danaube so the Monastery of Comana was closer-” Though all the names were foreign to me he had that distant look I’ve seen on many a men faces, older ones who recount stories of war in their youths or men like my father who are revisiting stale and dusty memories, and the dried root of my curiosity sucked this up as if it was the water of life itself. “-But thats all meaningless to you and ancient history for me-”

“Oh but I am really interested! There is so much I want to ask-” And I thought how I might persuade him to sate this interest.”-Might you not humor your guest in this for all have endured?” This sounded a little too self pitying even to my ears but that was how it escaped me so there was no returning.

“Are you attempting to guilt me?” He teased, rather warmly, he’d slowly moved to encircle my hips which were at the level of his own.

“My goodness, I wouldn’t presume you capable of such a feat-”

“I am you know- capable that is- But just a little.”

“I believe that less then I first suspected your beheading.”

“Ah but that did prove to be true, so consider that you wrong me still.” He replied and for a moment I recalled all my previous observations and thoughts and grew still with them in remembrance. 

“It must be very different for you-” I remarked, lofty by my position above him, thoughtlessly my fingers moved by way they always did in thoughtless agitation stroking the pulsless flesh as I might be absorbed into the dark cistern of his gaze he tightened his hold upon me, like a snake coiling tight as those exotic constrictors that swallow their prey whole but first suffocate them. I twitched, the helpless eager little mouse I was and I imagine now my little whiskers quivering as he looked at me. 

“I suspect so.” He was growing interested in my breasts which were of level to his face I realized as he pulled me close, my stomach rebelled gently quite full though the ache at the back of my throat like an itch beckoned for more still. A part of me wanted to share with him my suspicions about compassion and yet I felt certain this may offend him in some way as well as ‘excuse’ his cruelty which I sensed at any moment he might again exercise. “I suppose I might humor you so long as it pleases me to.”

“In that you do little that doesn’t please you I would expect no less.” I said and- “Might I make myself more comfortable?”

“So long as comfort isn’t further from my grasp.” 

“Let us lay near then, but in such a way I might recline.” I suggested and permitted by his arms to slip free and in gathering my skirts so I might walk on my knees back he took my hand in place of my hips and followed my movement so that he stretched out and down and arm beneath his head I mirrored him much as I had upon the turret under the stars so that we might face each other and I lay long with my own arm as a pillow.

His hand moved to my hip, a weighty reminder which pulled gently like strings upon my lower belly in a way that made me sleepy and eager to roll closer which I denied.

Where to begin? 

“Tell me about your childhood.” 

“Oh dear that was a dreadfully long time ago- but alright, though its not pretty.” 

* * *

It wasn’t, but it was… It was fascinating. There was something so hypnotizing listening to him, so much so that I struggle to recall it all and in my mind those descriptions and dates which were so vivid in the telling are by my attempts to re-count it absolutely confused so that one story leads into another and I see it makes no sense although I swear it did then. So I will, for I must lest I get a headache simply continue with those later questions that I do remember well enough and better still what they led to.

* * *

“Are there any more like you?” I asked finally- finally daring I suppose for this question had lingered all the while unasked, for I was both afraid of the answer and what the question might reveal about my recent experience. I dared it then however.

“Similar, perhaps, like me- not that I’ve gathered as I’ve walked this earth.”

“Similar as in-?”

“Vampires- undead that feast on the blood of the living.” He elaborated ghoulishly with the craggly charm of his teeth showing.

“And all these other things, It’s so difficult to wrap my mind around. You dislike mirrors, the sun, you cannot look upon the cross. Would reading scripture give you a headache?”

“Should I be worried you're looking to destroy me?”

“Is it even possible?”

“Yes, though not all that easily if four hundred years is an appropriate measuring stick.” I could see his reluctance to elaborate on those things which might harm him, but he seemed willing to humor me. “I told you before I don’t believe in god.”

“Then why does the symbol effect you so? If that is not a sign I do not know it myself.”

“Its a sign only that I’ve taken from those so long that I’ve been left with some instinct of revulsion which dogs me still- Even your agnosticism is quite pleasant change of fare.”

“So it might be-” and I hesitated here slightly fearing to give to much away- “It might be other creatures of the same… species if not advanced as you do not regard the same fears depending upon their fare?”

Could this account too for the creatures ability to walk in daylight? I feared drawing any more suspicion to making more specific questions.

“By my logic- yes.” Of course I realized he would not be in the position to know exactly considering his own limitations and this interested me as I suspected by his mention of ‘pet’s and what I had seen myself, and knew of him and his inquiring mind that he was the sort to run such experiments and suspected this was the purpose of his ‘pet’.

“And mirrors? Baubles of vanity I seem to remember you saying.”

“Why don’t I show you,” He suggested, “Any reflective surface might do- ah-” He said and he reached around to pull up the silver tray, empty now and shook free the crumbs carelessly before he brought it between us to lay the gleaming silver between our bodies like a pool of water. “Come look.” and he bade me to lean which I obeyed to see my blurred face there. 

“Mirrors are a kind of magic. They can show what is, or what might be- if you know how to look.” He murmured and I felt something- not something without but something within stirring my senses and as that occurred the blur of the silver began to change, to focus and sharpen and the image came to me whole and sudden and I gasped.

“What do you see?”

“Do you not know? I asked, unable to look away in wonder as I stared into the strange images I saw which moved like memories- yet were none I ever had. 

What I saw then in this looking glass was that strange fantasy I had spoken of upon the tower. That silly thing- I saw Lucy with a curly haired dandy in her wedding dress, and myself in my own gown of white arm in arm with that strapping Texan and I laughed a little at this and the image rippled- changed to the swelling of bellies showing under taught bed sheets, Lucy and I bed mates again in late pregnancy. It was enough to wound me, god Lucy! I had not seen her in so long! I would never see her again. 

My thoughts darkened and hereto and so did the glass become darkly. That ache in the back of my throat pitched and leaning forward so I noticed again the ache in my breasts too as the image of Lucy disappeared to my regret drawing from me a sound of disappointment but then-

God. How can it be described? I felt as if I was sinking into the scene- into the darkness of the glass so that nothing else remained of my vision except the gleaming surface that rippled and I became insensible of anything else beyond the discomforts of my own body which there in the glass darkly amplified as being in a dark room heightened all the senses when one is lost. 

The glass rippled like a dark water but the color was changing. Was it the glow of the fire that created that red? Or perhaps the gleaming of the wine bottle casting a reflection?

As the color it deepened to an unmistakable scarlet pool so too did the scent of it fill my mind buzzing like hundred of little flies. Earthen, metallic… yet not repulsive it was fragrant it a way, but still- it was blood I knew. The pool rippled as something was breaking from beneath- emerging- round, the blood thinning to show. 

The crown of a downy head. My body keened strangely and I was mute and overcome as the little face emerged- blood pooled in the eyes and ran thick over a mouth which opened and made a noise of distress I knew all too well. Its brows knit and little shaking fists emerged from the blood quaking and the mouth opened to darkness, hungry empty darkness as it gave a warbling cry. A cry I knew so well for it haunted my memories always before I slept and the movement I woke…

**Hunger**. 

God so **hungry**.

I felt it as if it was my own, striking my belly like hot hungry coals, burning and scorching my throat like talons raking and scouring my belly with need.

I tried to reach for it but it slipped beneath the dark surface and suddenly I was drowning in it, I felt it crawling up me, inside me.

My guts gave a kick and such was my horror. There was a flash of white, almost painful to my eyes. Which I now realize must have been the Count suddenly removing the gleaming silver.

“ **Sophie** , _Sophie_!” 

I gasped to find myself pushed back his face over mine with genuine concern etched into his features. _Oh god_ -my mind cried- the baby, _the baby_ why had he done this to me again?

“How could you!” I beat his breast insensibly before he made this impossible by crushing me to his chest so that my arms were locked and my head cradled. “How could you-?” I sobbed betrayed by what I was certain was another action of his malevolence.

“I helped you see, I do not summon the images, they are simply reflected-.”

“Liar!-Oh god.” It remained behind my eyelids.. But it was more than I simply saw- I’d felt it with my whole body. I’d… Smelled the blood, heard the cry, felt its hunger! But had that not been what I felt exactly holding that dying child? 

I became sensible that I may have raised this demon myself so ghoulishly and relaxed into his embrace for comfort only quaking. “It was the baby- there was so much blood and it was so hungry.”

“The baby.” He repeated slowly, yet some hesitation in his voice though he withdrew to stroke me and calm my now hot face with those blessedly cool fingers and I sat up to rest in his arms. “A memory?”

“It-it was innocent at first- me and Lucy to be married, and then pregnant and then it all changed. There was so much blood I thought I’d drown in it- I could smell it, I heard him cry- and he was so hungry. I still feel it at the back of my throat! It’s burning.” And it was, the ache intensifying even then as I sobbed and swallowed around it. “It feels like I’ve swallowed a hot coal.”

“Shhhh, it's over now. Forgive me. It was only meant to be an amusement. Just a parlor trick.” He said petting me gently until I grew calmer and when I was ‘calm’ I was eager to accept his cool kisses upon my hot cheeks, and welcomed the intrusion of that cool slippery eel between my lips, devouring my sorrow quenching the coal. He withdrew from my lips but pressed his head to mine, his voice carrying the faint sound of arousal which stirred me even greater. “Thank goodness, for pleasant diversions.” 

“Mmm.”

“Let me taste you Sophie.” 

“I possess no means to prevent you.” I mumbled, thick words. 

“I would have you ask for me all the same.” 

“I fear I have to remain, a little resistant, if only for posterity.” I said, a little breathless. “But please,” I asked, my voice still thick from tears so recently shed. “I beg that you do not rend my dress, It has no such notions of resistance.”

* * *

Considering what I have gone into detail previously I feel no need to elaborate the attention he gave me as they began, only I will mark the differences. The first being the erotic undressing of my breasts and, the heady change of this new position, laid back as I was, with him above me. His thigh pushing between my legs, his body seating itself to lay heavily over my own. The sweet cramps deepened like a flood to a great ache of heat that blazed, frustrated by lack of attention at the sweetest spot. My body, quite on its own, seemed to find some absent distraction in squirming which though did not relieve the ache seemed impossible to stop. Ultimately a frustration. I felt certain he knew this, for at times he shifted, I think in order stoke my torment. As he had upon the turret that night.

When he withdrew he looked pleasantly suffused, licking his lips like a satisfied cat, a contrast to my own belated frustration which had grown.

“What?” He asked but flexed in such a way to make me flare and I could see that he was still enjoying himself. I clenched, feeling an aching pain like a muscle cramp between my thighs, in a place I had never ventured except with diligence to wash myself. 

“Still don’t want me to taste you?” He shifted again, but this time brought his head lower giving a parting kiss to my breast before descending. 

And descending...

Descending _there_ , to the crux where through the fabric he pressed his face and began to rub. My first thought was to withdraw, and immediately, however that would have been quite difficult and as this panic eased it was impossible not to feel the intention of this action for the sensations it produced. That feeling again which his hand had previously brought me upon the Canape before the fire when his hand had rolled so... I was torn. My hands flying to his head, uncertain to pull him off or push him deeper. However this indecision was quickly fixed by him for he rose up to my frustration with a smoky smile.

“Have it your way Sophie.” 

“You take advantage of my vulnerability.” I accused, still thick with tears and tensioned aches so cruelly wound only tighter. 

“Of course I do,.” He said returning to kiss me until my lips were swollen and though I grew tender with exhaustion his passion only grew incensed and I sensed his preternatural hunger. “And I vow to use every one of those vulnerabilities to my imminent advantage.”

“ **Beast.** ” I murmured without edge.

“More than that.” He hummed like a great cat, thrumming his desire palpable and I was filled with the tenderness of submission.

In this I permitted myself to touch his cheeks, his hair and to run my fingers along that crisp white shirt now mottled with damp tears and stole breaths where I might, whimpering as his mouth returned to abuse bruised lips. I felt the chain about my neck almost like a noose and struggled to resist the urge to tear it off of. It was already twisted away from sight and now it remained but a frustration. 

I felt flooded and swollen for him, near bursting with an over ripeness eager to gush and flood. From my belly to the aching in my breast and the throbbing in my head. His hand moved again to knead my flesh which was still exposed rolling the nipple making me quake with unrelenting despair and desire. 

“Think of something-” He demanded suddenly in that thick bestial voice and my mind sluggish did not quite yet grasp his meaning but when his eyes took mine I was dropped like a stone into the well of his eyes and was taken over by the knowledge of his desire. _A memory, something dear that we might share_.

Lucy came to mind, she flooded it like the wicked tumult of the sea and I felt his shudder of pleasure. The weight of him nestled between my legs was exquisite, throbbing like that ocean- or perhaps my heart, but he was rumbling too, savage rolling like a purr or growl. 

There was violence in this penetration that was not that sweet supping at my bedside, I felt all at once my body gush, a dam swollen then flooding eagerly. I was stretched out so beneath him, adoring the feeling of his weight above mine how he moved- his sucking and ministrations following that euphoric cascade- I was caught in the little death suddenly, the swollen aching in by belly wrung out by kneading fingers rippling and heightening my ecstasy so that I felt my body taken intensely by spasms and pulses. He was moving with me, never ceasing so that I was driven thrice there until I was nothing but quaking and reduced to quivering gasps. 

His hands took one mine which had tangled in his hair and unlacing it from that knot he grappled it within his own fingers and replaced mine between his and I heard the faint sucking noise cease with a gutteral reluctant groan of frustration, his hips jutting gently as if an way to expend that frustration. 

I cannot say that I kissed with any adeptness for my mouth was numb and I was overcome with languor but I tasted again that tang of my lifeblood on his kiss and noted the strange frank ache burgeon again in my throat like the anticipation of drought. 

He was murmuring things to me, I could barely catch them. Sweet nothings perhaps I caught only glimpses of.

“-much promise- _difficult_ not- too quickly.” He was panting and still rutting in such an exquisite way that another release caught me suddenly and I felt him stroke the hair from my face, felt the breath, tangy of metal and warm brush too over my lips and cheeks and I opened my eyes as heavy as they were and captured his face in that moment.

Hunger and desire, tortioned by feverish gleam of perhaps -affection? He rolled again I saw the smattering of hair and wondered suddenly if he was without his shirt and if so when he might have removed it, but my vision was so hazy... Perhaps his collar was merely pulled down? His fingers squeezed between mine and another roll of pleasure so that even his eyes fluttered shut. 

Was I going to die like this? I wonder if I asked aloud or if perhaps more insidiously he simply ‘heard me’

“Not yet, not like this- not -yet.” and then I was lost to the world.

* * *

I caught fleshes of sensation, stark - like bright flashes in the dark.

Cold water running over my body and the roughness of a cloth drawing over my flesh. My own shuddering breaths like a distant alarm and the sudden flash of his face. Or not his face exactly.

Just two dark pools of his eyes. Deep oubliettes sucking me back into the void and there was a sense of forgetting in that place- a kind of command issued like a word upon the tip of your tongue familiar yet suddenly impossible to summon.

But the dark was heedless and unrelenting and soon I saw nothing again at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hot enough yet???  
> Don't worry we wont forget about Elaina even if Sophie has for now. :)  
> Enjoy!


	9. April 17th 1897

_**Sophie Harker's Diary** _

_**April 17th 1897** _

* * *

I woke quite alone, which was a relief for my first thought- or rather perhaps expectation was to open my eyes and see a pair of dark ones staring down at me. I had not told him about my visitor. And laying there feeling so vulnerable and trapped by languor I re-considered this as naive. 

And my languor this morning was difficult to overcome! Heavy leaden limbs and an agitation of restlessness of spirit. Rising late in the day, my neck itching faintly and dressed down again in my undergarments though I suspect- no I _swear_ that I have been bathed but cannot quite put my finger upon any memory specific except those strangely filtered ones which could be naught but some fragments of dream rather than memory. 

However when I’d got the strength I took it to make my account while it was still so fresh and then set myself to more appealing affairs: food.

I ate heartily however of the food he’d left me, a little less than a dozen eggs of seemingly different variety and cheeses and some dried meats that were salty and good on the tongue. Thick bread and thicker slabs of butter. It should have been enough for two meals, perhaps two and a half for a woman my size should she be eating with any delicacy.

I however seemed to be beyond that ‘delicacy’ and hungry- I laved the bread thick with the butter and rolled the salty dried meats up and licked the salty brine from my fingers and the spices and set to each egg one after another almost methodically, a mindless rhythm overcoming me like notes in a music sheet replayed: the rolling crack of the shell and picking away the pieces from the gleaming white flesh. Feeling it split softly beneath teeth and to that thick chalky middle which made me thirsty.

This became almost hypnotizing, sitting there peeling and eating. Like a rhythm.

One: peel, bite, chew, swallow..

Two, peel, bite chew, swallow...

On and on.

Until it was interrupted by a _crunch_ , the feeling of my teeth slipping into the egg meat- the flavor strongly that of more of a hearty soup-delicious yet strange and not ‘egg’ like i noted as my teeth moved through some resistance, running the peculiar texture over my tongue- for this was not soft or jelly like but ridged with shape and with soft serrations of texture… I bit through half chewing thoughtfully enjoying the intensely savoriness of this new thing and withdrew the lingering half to look at what it was that I’d just enjoyed.

Translucent flesh, partially formed, blots beneath fused flesh and the idea of curled little wings - if only the flesh wasn’t half eaten.

A fertilized chick boiled in its own shell.

Half eaten.

I dropped it, revolted for what I saw and barely made it to my window before I retched.

For a little while I was overcome with a chaos of senses uneasy and nauseous.

What more can I say about that horror or how, despite the vomit, or how much I rinsed my mouth I still tasted it- felt the grit of the little bones soft from the boiling and the flavor- like a soup almost- hearty and good… and suddenly I want to retch again despite all that. 

* * *

_April 17th 1897_

_-continued-_

Crates now litter the library where I have come to retrieve my diary and where I now recline. The air is filled with a pleasant woody musk. Despite my languor today my muscles protest and bade me to repast. I could not bring myself to stay in my room, not for the egg, not for as well my sudden paranoia that I will be ‘visited’ again. Oh why did I not simply tell him about her and he might have put me at some ease somehow?

I am already hungry again because of my unfortunate breakfast. I am tired and yet I have the feeling of one who drinks far too strong a brew of coffee and when my stomach cramps hungrily I close my eyes and see that little bird and am sick and hungry feeling all at once and I hate myself a little.

I’ve decided to take what remains of my day and explore those papers my father discovered and that remain upon the Counts desk below though I am not committed to any serious expedition yet.

* * *

_April 17th 1897_

_-continued-_

With some interest I have- I believe- made the same discovery my father has. That is the location of a passage that would lead to our ‘visitor’. Unfortunately I have not the energy to pursue this venture today and have instead resigned myself to an extended repast and will simply have to hope that the Count will not notice or care of my snooping. I did my best to memorize the avenue- it is difficult to for get it- for the maps indicate a secret door behind that great old painting of Petruvio himself, and there secret stairs lead to a place which my father approximated was above his room. 

I have returned to my own rooms now to catch some strength. I suspect the ‘pet’ who paid me a visit was quite frightened by my awakening, and will not return for fear of the master. Though perhaps I only desire to believe that so I may rest comfortably. As I am now I feel both agitation and languor and a distracted hunger despite some lingering malaise of sickness which still hovers in my throat and stomach. Sleep I hope will give me some easing of this.

* * *

I dreamt again of that cool cloth, only it wasn’t just that- even as I write this the dream grows ever more distant to my mind. It seemed so important when I woke that I immediately jerked and grasped my diary. Like some sudden flash of realization or remembrance- but now- now I all the meaning and images have escaped me and I find myself sitting up holding my pen shaking quite stupidly with nothing to write. My throat is dry but I’m so tired I am simply going back to sleep.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tid bit.   
> Sometimes saying less is saying more after all.


	10. April 17th 1897 Continued

**_April 17th 1897_ **

**_-continued -_ **

* * *

I woke to a tender cool touch and opened my eyes to see I was being tended to by his hand which graced my brow and cheek.

“You should sleep tonight.” He said as a doctor might instruct an ill patient. Was I very ill? I was foggy at first in thought and uncertain. Had I slept for long? There was warm glowing candle light and a disoriented feeling. “I’ve brought food-” 

I am ashamed to say that at the mention of food- I was suddenly reminded of my own great hunger and started up rather abruptly and I suspect comically.

“Food?” 

“Perhaps you're not quite so gone as I feared.” He laughed at me.

“I got sick this morning, I’ve been famished all day.” I told him, distracted in seeing the silver tray upon that little cart.

“Just when you needed nourishment the most,” He clucked looking apologetic. “Should I fear you’ll bite my hand if I feed you?”

“Only if you take too long.” I replied, managing some humor. 

* * *

Soup. Oh what could have been better? I might have wept in gratitude at the scent and the sight of the glossy yellow fat gleaming and rippling over the surface, tender meat and a kind of sourness to the broth which made my stomach turn painfully. The only difficulty was my impatience which rustled about my breast only relenting after he served me like a sick nurse several bites which took the edge off of the ache finally and gave me some patience again.

“I must look wretched.”

“A little pale, but quite comely actually.” He said and I accepted another mouthful. He was quite focused on his task but he admitted almost apologetically over the next spoonful. “I took more than I intended to.” I chewed over that as I chewed over the next bite, the meat was a little dry and overdone I thought but not unpleasant. 

I was less anxious than I thought I’d be, actually I found myself feeling quite apathetic about it, yet I could see it bothered him and this amused me a little.

“Then we may part ways sooner than you expect. Does it bother you?” My aloofness here was no facade (I doubt I would have energy for such a thing) but really quite sincere.

“One does not part from good friends easily.” He said and it was impossible not to interpret that as being spoken of in the manner of one with the dearest affections.

I felt a rise of melancholy.

“Is that what we are? Friends?” He handed me the bowl in which I might finish the dregs, and after a swallow I licked the fat and salt brine from my lips, sour and good but leaving me thirsty and returned it to the cart. He offered wine but I found no stomach for it and asked for the water to quench me. As I drank he adjusted things so that I might reach the cart myself and moving to the other side of the bed helped himself on it, shoes still on to settle beside me.

“Lovers perhaps?” He asked, suggestively dimpling the bed and arranging himself to be beside me. I raised my brow to him, not missing the lingering gaze as he’d watched me swallow.

“Or simply a snack?” I said of that gaze.

“You wound me.” Perhaps I’d misinterpreted those ‘affections’ after all, yet the turn of humor lightened my spirit. He had that boyish look in his eye again and with it the dampness and morose air which were interwoven like shadows ready to reach forward and strangle- were rendered powerless.

“You _are_ eating me.” I pointed out.

“Yes but only because I like you so much.” But there it was again, a little flicker of sincerity, yet to focus on it would be to dour the mood. There was already too much of that and genuine humor was so fleeting and so delightful in such a place I could not but help to do my best to play along.

“Does the wolf need a belly rub?”

“Oh would you?” His eyes twinkled like two little black diamonds and he grinned that teasing eager boyish grin propped up as he was with his brow raised invitingly. 

What could I do but obliged- I laughed of course- floating on the elevated spirits of a freshly full belly and resoundingly charming company and biting my lip - for it was impossible not to feel a sudden shyness despite myself I obliged him by drumming my fingers over his black vest and settling there. 

Somewhere a muse grinned wickedly for silly and content as I got a terrible idea.

“Are vampires ticklish?” 

He looked at me, pleasantly (I think) taken off guard by this question.

“I don’t think many dare to get that close.”

“Well here I am, I suppose with the last of my life I might use it in the name of science.” I said and with serious focus I prodded a rib. He kept his face perfectly censured. “The beast shows no indication of feeling at a single poke.” I marked dryly as if dictating and I saw the whisper of a smile and a greater gleam of determination in his eye to smote it. “I now attempt to increase my measure.” I continued and reapplied my efforts more vigorously at his exposed flank.

I dug generously for several moments without any success and relented thoughtfully.

“Subject continues to show a lack of sensitivity, however we mustn’t draw conclusions…” I sat up here and kicked free of sheets to kneel and having already done it once previously I was given heart to repeat myself in unbuttoning the collar of his shirt, which was a simpler standard collar giving me ample access to his neck. 

I stroked his neck slowly, and his Adam's apple bobbed in a swallow and taking sign from this I redoubled my furtive strokes beneath his ear and down his nape. My own anticipation rose. He was pretending it had no effect but I was most certain it did.

There was a quiver. 

“Subject seems to be showing some signs of stimulation by drawing the fingers down the lobe to the clavicle…” 

He grabbed me suddenly, like a spring trap snapping shut and pulled my leg and hip over his lap where a hard ridge protruded and my amusement left me in an instant gust for my feeling of this left me breathless with instant arousal.

The effect I realized only then had not been quite what I had been anticipating, but it was an effect nonetheless. Clearly there is a reason few have tickled vampires.

“Stimulation was it?” He raised his hips and bore mine down to grind our flesh despite the undergarments and his garments separating and binding him. 

“I’m afraid I don’t make a very good- scientist.” I gasped, suddenly a little dizzy as he brought me to rock gently upon that ridge which inspired a violent ache of desire, not unlike hunger.

“You make an excellent scientist- I simply prefer to deny categorization and study.”

“Perhaps I merely chose the wrong topic- is this to be interpreted as a desire of flesh and not simply blood?” 

With so little experience of the flesh I remember only how dizzy I was at the feelings it invoked despite it being such a new feeling- at least so obvious for he had before ‘driven’ himself into me. Only in this position was it altogether a different sensation, and somehow with It i suspected a different expectation..

“Depends on the flesh.” And he kneaded mine through my gown. “One is a necessity to satisfy, the other a very pleasant diversion I rarely happen upon the opportunity to enjoy as I might.” 

“Surely you can take easily from each?”

“What is _easy_ is hardly worthwhile. Though in the first it might not be avoided, in the second I demand invitation.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“You tell me Sophie.”

I did want him. And I struggled to remember why I bothered refusing. Pleasant diversions would be all that was left to me, why not enjoy them?

“Are you sure there is no god?” At my thighs his hands stilled, this question now emerged could not been withdrawn. Wence had it come? It seemed to simply spring up from me, from some strange reservoir of reserve, perhaps my last reserve.

He considered me, and my question very seriously and then spoke.

“Sophie, if there is he created even me and I daresay he loves suffering most of all.”

“Then what happens after? Do you merely disappear?”

“I didn’t.” He said simply and sighed but stroked me beneath my skirts trailing his fingers. 

I thought about that. No heaven, no hell, simply a void. Absence and was strangely soothed. 

Lucy would never forgive me dying a virgin. A spinster with secret lovers perhaps but never a virgin. 

I drew up my hands to feel that small little cross and unclasped it.

“Don’t-” He became taut with agitation his hand moving over mine which gripped the cross ready to pull it free. This vehemence surprised me, but I had come to a conclusion. A resolution if it were and I shook my head despite his plea. “For your own sake.” 

“Don’t you want to prove your hypothesis?” and he watched me incredulously. I daresay uneasily as I gathered the necklace in my hand. “I don’t believe anymore so by that, my blood would free you will it not?” As I spoke I moved to stroke his lip with my thumb, an invitation. He was panting slightly, I felt almost dizzy in the tide of his eyes which threatened like a great undertow to bring me in. His lips parted and pressing I could see the lower ridge of hits teeth and a surreal blurring and shifting which must be seen to be described as his teeth became serrated. 

I was as enraptured as he was, and coiled in anticipation edged with the black stain of fear and all its instincts. He took my hand suddenly, in that snapping way which made my heart leap like a fish out of water and at that little throb he guided my thumb between his lips and I pressed it there as if pressing my finger into a thorn until the sharp prick of pain jumped through me and I winced. 

I shifted upon my seat and felt the rekindling his arousal and with it my own, his tongue worrying the wound slippery and sliding sucking he grumbled like a low beast. While his eyes were closed I freed the cross to dangle from my freed hand. My finger throbbed at the beat of my heart. A strong long pulse, his sucking sending hot sparks through arm. But I was not to be distracted.

“Now you must simply open your eyes.” I commanded. 

His tightened and then waned and his eyes opened blood red with pits of coal and he snarled low, like an animal and I felt his body coiling like a dog certain of a kick. But it struck me as there was not pain on his face, merely revulsion which at any moment he might interpret as a strike and lunge and so I thought to sooth him. Reminding myself his pet had no such fears, that it was truly nothing more than a figment and impression, and one which if his hypothesis was correct I would alleviate from him.

“Shhh. It’s nothing is it? Just an old habit.” He was frozen for a long moment, fixating on that little thing with a bright savagery that as I watched began to slacken and dim. The curled lips softening back over savage teeth like a curtain closing. Drawling lips over my throbbing thumb and sucking almost absently gaze still fixated as if uncertain and waiting like an uneasy animal waits for motion. 

“Come hold out your hand.” I commanded. We both watched the cross drop to his palm and felt his flinch and waited. There was no smoke, only his nostrils flaring as if waiting to catch wind of it before it slipped down into his palm and taking his fingers I closed them over the little thing with both of my own, my thumb smarting gently. He squeezed, and I felt the force of his knuckles popping and when he opened his hand again it was nothing but a deformed piece with the jewels crushed like glass in his palm. He extended it over the bed and tipped out onto the floor where it left a dull thud.

“Ashes to ashes.” He murmured and then looked up at me in a knitted as if himself perplexed and amazed. “Do you have any idea what you’ve given me?” Words made thick over beastly teeth, nearly gutteral, but spoken with profound tenderness.

“Something that makes me relieved my only judge is myself, for that is a burden enough to bear.” I noted to myself with only the shadowy echo of regret- a thought without feeling or shape. I knew I should feel it, but did not quite.

“Let me ease that burden.” He took my hip with one hand and with the other slid his fingers around my neck and cheek, sitting himself up from the pillows as if to reach me for a kiss but stopped. “Do you want me Sophie?” We shared the feeling of my pulse, my breath held. For his merit I will say he did not look me in the eyes but upon the lips and in his face was that almost forlorn sincerity and longing. The word was a bird trapped in cage of my ribs, batting and fighting to escape.

I let it.

“Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~!~


	11. April 17th 1897 Concluded

**_April 17th 1897_ **

**_-continued-_**

* * *

> _ “Do you want me Sophie?” _
> 
> _ “Yes.” _
> 
> * * *

“Yes.” I said. “Yes I do- what is it you said?” I struggled to recall, or even remember how to move my lips with how he looked at me. “Thank goodness for pleasant distractions-?”

He undressed me and drove me back to the sheets, allowing me the enjoyment of undressing him. Oh and I did enjoy it. Each button revealing flesh to touch and explore, the mysterious terrain of the male body. Pale skin, with thickets of hair, becoming sparse and dense again, dips and valleys flesh like sheets over bones or resistance of sinew rippling below. 

Manhood itself as ugly as it initially seems- certainly you could never call it beautiful and I would laugh at anyone who might try, however it is exquisitely delightful all the same. It gives way under the touch but **thickens** , almost hardening in resistance and at my touch it had a pleasing effect upon the specimen for which it was attached.

“I’m afraid I have only the vaguest notion of how this is to be done.” I admitted, unable to look away from what I held. The flesh was very soft, softer then my own, and it was almost slippery. Not wet of course- but like how a catskin moves easily from the flesh below. I stroked gently moving the skin back to see something pinkish emerge from the loose flesh upon the end. Pink and gleaming and a clear sticky fluid leaking. Was that _seed_ or a dampness that emerged like my own naturally? Perhaps my 'scientific' mind was a an escape for the embarrassment I would feel with no other thoughts to distract me. I can laugh now at my self for all these things.

His hand closed around mine and guided my hand in a motion to stroke him, exposing this head and then drawing the flesh back up around it again. 

“Not so tightly- you aren’t choking a chicken.” He tutted me like a professor and I giggled, but obeyed and was rewarded with a pleased noise, his hand slipping away and down between my legs and his fingers slipped through folds that were swollen with moisture and desire which he stroked as I stroked him. Unfortunately this caused me to lose my place several times though he did not seem to mind in particular when after each falter I resumed again.

It was strangely playful and altogether pleasing to sit and touch without shyness, and my pace grew bolder as so did his fingers.

The feeling of him entering me was the summation of my bodies constant cravings and aches and I felt my body torsion delightedly in welcome to the guest who curled and probed making my breath hitch and my body hungrier. 

When he withdrew his finger it was to my disappointment but then fascination which mingled with revulsion and arousal as he took that finger, slippery and gleaming and sucked it in his mouth.

“You are a feast Sophie.” He told me.

Then he showed me a new way to be devoured.

* * *

  
  


When he returned to my lips he brought with me the musk and flavor of my own sex which I found oddly arousing and not at all displeasing or unpleasant. I did not merely submit to his mouth any longer, for he was not an invader to me and I enjoyed kissing his cheeks and jaw and neck, to fully enjoy the the feeling of his hair through my fingers and to draw them over his shoulders and strong arms where beneath the soft flesh was sinew and strength and then back again to the flat planes of his back with its valleys of shifting bones and muscles.

He’d taken me so slowly, and though he’d guided me to my pleasure, I desired still the full consummation and to discard that last barrier that mocked an innocence I no longer possessed nor needed. 

I felt the engorgement of his desire thick between our bodies, yet not positioned as that I might gain that desired fulfillment. 

“Are you waiting for an invitation?” I asked.

“I told you it would be a crime to take you quickly-” He said and kneaded my breast, lowering his head to capture it with his mouth and draw out whatever nourishment he might, though he seemed to take more from my torture and he teased the nipple with a hard roll of his tongue and then between his teeth pinching causing a shock of pain mingling with pleasure to zip through me as sharply as electric current. “I intend to make you last.” He said, thick with distraction and a full mouth. I could not help but laugh, though it may have escaped as a torturous groan now that I think about it.

“Yes well you have perhaps hundreds of more years I’ll be driven mad in another few moments assuming that is I’m not quite gone already.” He raised his head with that toothy smirk and rested his cheek with idle languor on my other poorly ignored breast and blinked up at me with those gleaming pitch eyes which had all the depths of a night sky and the softness of the most luxurious velvet.

“To survive in this world does take a kind of madness. The sane simply can’t bear it all for long.” I was stabbed with such a hunger, as poingent as the need for nourishment- except it was for him. To kiss and taste all of him, and to be thus taken by him as well. It rolled and swelled inside me like an agony, like a maddening thirst so that even my throat ached and was dry.

“Please,” I murmured impatiently, wiggling. “Won’t you come inside?”

I asked archly, eager to see the serious look upon his face as he moved his hand between our bodies and gripping himself pushed himself upon my entrance, seeking the dip and finding it by nudging apart the flesh. He propped himself up, his belly laid flush to mind, his chest to mine and his face my ceiling, my sky his eyes glimmering still with such a hunger I felt reflected in them that my own felt pitiable and with that thought came a distant echo of gratitude that I might never know such hunger as his.

“Ask me again.” He asked, and lowered his nose to skim the valley of my cheek, the crown of my head and I would not refuse him. I don't think I could have refused him anything and any pride I might have evaporated.

“My lord, won’t you come in?” 

When he pushed, there was an almost sinuous resistance, but he held himself there at the threshold while I writhed in purgatory and with the most serious of expressions he asked:

“And do you welcome me gladly and of your own volition?”

I am ashamed recounting the fervor of it, the intensity of my longing was unbearable, worse than any hunger or thirst I had ever experienced. It was an eclipse, a blanking of self to sense.

“Yes, **please** -” 

I whimpered and was not forced to beg further as I might have, he could have tortured me, made me say anything. 

Instead he pressed through that itching, _aching_ , resistance- it was not unlike the penetration of his teeth in my flesh except it burned and prickled. The blossoming of pain hot rather than the cold flush brought by his kiss. 

There is nothing that can quite describe it to the uninitiated. The feeling of one moving inside you, the initial resistance that flares brightly in the back of your mind to the pain to that spark of pain which he pushes through heedless despite the singular distant cry in your mind that perhaps its _too_ much that something is wrong, only to feel it give away. to crest the ridge of pain and enter a new realm. The first feeling of fullness so strange and startling there is a moment of wondering what all the fuss is about until the withdrawal and at **that** moment you ache to have him return for its only then you realize quite how pleasing it is. Pushing and stretching  _ filling _ . How quickly the tide turns from that peculiar anxiety and pain- like she snap of cartilage or ligament- to something quite else.

It's a kind of love in a way unlike anything that could be found in a pew or in any reliquary yet there is something divine within it. In a world without god I now cannot imagine something closer to being holy than the unity I found as he filled me- It was  a kind of worship, and a better kind than any I’d being graced with my entire life.

He thrust deeply between the V of my spread legs, my own hips jarring to meet him. He nuzzled me and his fingers found mine and became tied and pressed into the bed as he leveraged his weight atop of me, pushing deeper so that I felt my toes curling and myself squeezing so that he hummed and huffed and groaned. I adored the noises he made. His silence would have been an agony, my own noises embarrassing even crass, but it was his earnest expression of delight, unabashed pleasure which allowed me the daring to join him in a chorus of low pleasing hums and gasps and whimpers. 

You would think all that I might describe- all that holy business- I should have met my little death at any moment, but- and it is perhaps rather funny truth be told it was altogether too delightful really to quite reach that point of abandon. It was the very act of it, rather than the conclusion that it brought that was the feast and altogether I do not believe I might have reached my little death had he not _cheated_.

If any shall read these depraved accounts then let it be known dear reader that I wrote frankly.

Thats right. 

Lord Dracula is a _cheat._

"Sophie." He groaned, "Look at me." and his hand brought mine to his cheek where he kissed and his tongue even danced upon the greenish vein which shone stark through my pale flesh, and the hand was abandoned, left to roam and explore as it might. It chose to take his cheek as he took mine his took mine in a grip that demanded my gaze which quickly followed.

The power in his eyes as they met mine was so strong that I felt as if I'd stepped off a stair and my body cried in the distance, prickling as if all my hair stood on end, my scars and nipples prickling while he thrusted within me still, my belly throbbing acutely as if it sensed what my mind was oblivious to understand. As I tightened around him and he groaned, a voice coming down like an echo from the well I seemed to have stumbled within. My belly twinged, like Pavlov's dog hearing the bell.

"Come for me my darling- My pretty little Sophie, come apart for me." He bade, and I, apparently helpless obeyed.

It was the madness to be brought to that threshold again, like being consumed by a wave which came from nowhere, to be offered again as a chalice to ecstasy and then-  _ god _ \- to feel him reach his own- to spill his seed deeply within me. I gasped, for my body was overwrought with spasms and his thrusts had become erratic, almost violent with need before this collapse which now had him spasming still throbbing deep inside stoking the quick tumbles and cacophonous quarries which tumbled through my body possessing me in ecstasy. I wonder now if thats not what ecstasy is- the minds absolute submission to the body, minds which are always so **loud,** always so **busy** , suddenly made _mute_ to the glory of flesh, the symphony of biology being taken to its pinnacle.

Then there is only a faint ringing of bells in your mind- ecstasy own echo ringing like merry church bells leaving quakes in the flesh. 

He stayed bound to me, even allowing me now that I think about it to wrap myself around him, his ear pressed to my chest as a child might press his ear to a conch shell to hear the ocean, I saw only the dark line of his brow gently furloughed as I had him gathered up in my arms.

I pet my lover and my murderer, awash in the musk of our bodies. Earthen and animal sweat and sweetness and salt and he nuzzled me before sighing and kissing the closest breast to him gently, his body making a throaty rumble against mine as he spoke.

“Is it everything you imagined it could be?”

“Better still, especially since you cheated."

"Cheated?" He sat up a little , but his mouth was quirked with skeptical humor. "I have no idea what you mean."

"A liar and a cheat." I accused, and he bared all his teeth, perfectly human if not slightly sharper than most and charmingly craggy, but I was laughing and petting him still. 

"All for your benefit."

"How convenient." I remarked and his grin widened.

"Sometimes." He admitted rolling back finally and slid from without me, bringing a wet cool trail across my thigh and I resisted the urge to touch myself for I was curious I admit to explore the sudden changes which had taken place, but instead squeeze legs together, the heavy wet feeling inside a strange mix of repulsive yet arousing. Laying back like that I recalled vividly my first night in that bed and my ‘visitor’ who crept over me in the dark and laughed a little.

“What?”

“I only seem to remember the first night of my stay here being awoken by quite a _weight_ on my chest.” His brows like thick dark caterpillars crept higher at this remembrance.

“Ah yes, not my best moment. Did you take pleasure in teasing an old man?” My laugh was a bark. And I turned into his arms which opened for me and lay upon his chest. 

“What would you have called it- ah- a waste?”

“True, I wouldn’t have appreciated you in the slightest if you’d given it all up immediately.”

“And now I suppose I might be disposed of promptly.” 

Though I said this in jest he looked at me quite seriously.

“And what if I want to keep you?” 

Though there was no teasing in his face I laughed as if he was, because I didn't want to feel the prickling again of sadness and melancholy. Not there and then.

“At the rate you're enjoying me I suspect not to last beyond the week, my _Lord_.” I said teasing back but his expression remained very serious as he petted me and I wondered if this really didn’t quite depress his spirits and I caressed the serious brow gingerly if only to smooth the lines.

"Do you like calling me that 'My lord,' it rolls so well off your tongue I might just have to taste it." He said and before I could protest (as if I would) he turned up my face and took my mouth, powerfully stroking and seeking leaving me only with a dim whimper and when he withdrew I'd forgotten entirely what he'd asked and he simply said:  “I quite enjoy your company Sophie.” 

Another stab of melancholy. I reclined slightly to look at him witholding a sigh in my chest and simply observing what I might from that warm candle light.  I quite enjoyed his face, and being able to touch his body as such and to also be so similarly exposed yet so comfortable. I was torn between silly sentiments and equally the preposterousness of the situation. 

Finally, when silence stretched I asked:

“And what am I to say to that?" He said nothing and I could not fix myself any longer on his face for the threat of his eyes seemed to pose to my spirit and instead I traced the dark course hair of his chest as a somewhat stale emotion surfaced, having been quite comfortably left dusty and forgotten previously. "This might have made me cry so long ago you know. It’s quite the feat to ask one to console their murderer.”

“What changed?”

“It’s difficult to say." I admitted, but tried. "I was afraid mostly of being judged, or judgment and this place has a way of swallowing you whole so that all of that becomes so far away you forget why you’d ever worry.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“I did before-” and I realized then as I spoke what had changed. “Before the baby. . . He suffered so much. That he  **died** doesn’t disturb me so much as that he lived in such pain and that I was the cause. I was relieved when he died. So relieved, I was so ashamed to admit that but that's the truth. You said it true, when you dropped him out the window-  **I** was suffering, not he. His suffering ended… When you kiss me I feel that relief again.”

He was looking at me for a long time, so long and so still I wondered if I did not say something wrong but then his eyes returned from their distant fixated point and he ran his hand over my clavicle, my breast to my belly. 

“Let me wash you.” Though I was reluctant to leave the comfort, the stickiness between my legs was diminishing in its arousal so much that it only remained to be an increasingly uncomfortable feeling and I nodded.

* * *

He let me lay and doze while he retrieved the water. 

Soon the bath was filled in a manner best described as supernatural efficiency and all too soon I was brought up carried before I could to attempt to stand A kindness I think because I fear the fluids inside would slough out quite unwholesomely. Unfortunately this kindness did not extend much past, whether intentionally or something done in ignorance for still holding me he brought us both into the tub and the water being of ice made me gasp, and nearly black out for the cold that send my hairs rising. 

He laughed at me, apparently thinking it funny as I buzzed and chattered certain my lips were becoming blue, hot sparks travelling up my body then eventually numbing so that soon it was bearable. When he brought the cloth to me there was echoes of familiarity there and I remembered suddenly those strange scraps of dreams I had previously.

“ _déjà vu_.” 

“Hmm?” 

“Oh nothing I simply could have sworn we’ve done this before, I just had a very strange dream this morning.”

“Do you dream of me frequently?”

“Of course you’d make this about you.”

“Isn’t everything about me?” he mused, his hands below the water, the cloth rough on my belly slipping lower. 

It was tender there and I whimpered, and the cloth was soon abandoned as he pushed a finger in curling gently, coaxing the tendrils of his desire free and cooling the heat of my insides. It wasn’t exactly pleasurable but it was pleasant, despite feeling a little raw and tender. He moved so adeptly stroking me between my legs from behind until he was satisfied I was clean. Taking the cloth up I repaid the favor and humor left us while I rubbed the cloth and soap between my hands and turning in the water sat back in order to begin washing him.

Why I decided to think about it then and say it then I do not know. Only that I dared as I washed him to speak.

“If I tell you something will you promise not to be angry?”

“Are you trying to excite me again?” He teased but I felt a tension in his shoulders and smoothed them, letting the water drain in rivulets down.

“Will you only promise not to act out in anger- at me or any other creature?” He turned and I was not put to ease by that.

“What is it?”

“ _Promise_.” I requested again, fearing suddenly he would not, he sighed.

“Very well.” I permitted myself to feel relief, though it was not a very deep one. “I promise, now tell me.” I blinked away from his eyes, a flash of fear that If I was not prompt he'd _make_ me, flashed like a warning in the back of my mind.

“I had a visitor the day before last. I believe she’s been to my room more than once actually-”

“She-?" He began, then he stopped in understanding I think. “I see, did she-?"

“No! A t least I don’t believe so I woke to her. . . Well I think she might have _tried_ if I had not woken and frightened her.”

“That was lucky Sophie. Very lucky.”

“She’s dangerous than?”

“ _Very_ , why didn’t you tell me this immediately? He said with a kind of pinched sounding displeasure.

“Your angry…”

“No, Sophie- if I was angry you’d know it.” He said and waited until I had an answer.

“I- I don’t know.” I admitted, confused myself. “I was afraid you’d hurt her.” He laughed at that.

“So much compassion, your lucky - Or _I’m_ lucky perhaps she didn’t gobble you up. They are greedy that lot.” _That lot?_ I thought.

“That lot-?” and repeated like an echo. He waved his hand, sprinkling water onto the floor with this dismissal, a kind of distant displeased look in his face as he stared at somewhere distant as if focusing on an unpleasant recollection.

“Common undead- mindless, hungry empty imitations.”

Then I spoke (I see now) very foolishly. It is bound to happen when you speak with ever carelessness.

“That is to say your **uncommon**?” There was something of rage in his eyes then, and though it was but a flash I might have been scalded. 

“I best my leave of you now before I do something that displeases me.” 

and he began to leave, dressing still dripping.

Should I have apologized? I knew not what for then, yet I saw I offended him viscerally and that anger- that coldness stripped away every intimacy and comfort we shared, that I realized desperately then I needed as it was stripped away. Now I might think back and see how callously I'd spoken, and how that must have wounded his proud ego.

“Please-” I grabbed his hand over the tub, the rim of it pressing painfully at my breast as I reached. He stopped, his hand wet, pruned like any hand might be so long in water and limp to my touch. I didn’t know what to say, and suddenly struggled. “I didn’t mean to ruin it.” 

As I said something wrong and didn't know it, I seemed then to say something right for, h is shoulders lowered, and he returned to the tub side crouching and bringing my hand thoughtfully to his lips.

“Sophie- I assure you that ruination is my specialty and mine alone- will you forgive an old man his moods and let me put you to bed?”

“Yes.”

* * *

Those layers stripped so quickly were slower to return and brought less insulation to my terror now that I was ever more aware of it and my need for protection against his. Was his expression distant or was that my own imaginings? Likely he always wore that face- ever distant as he helped me re-dress. A process I might have done myself but embarrassingly, and strangely- I desired him to do it. 

He did as if sensing it himself. While I stood in my nightgown facing him as he toweled my hair gently, moving and massaging until it was acceptably tousled and no longer soaked. I could not help but watch him from this vantage point where my height is noticeably really only a head shorter than he I observed very closely the softness of his face and the lines there and that distant look and how his wet hair dripped down his cheeks. One drop streaked like a tear to the etched line in the corner of his mouth and without thought I captured it with my thumb, drawing his gaze back to me for for the first in many moments.

The hunger shone stark on his face, his dark eyes, having been idly distracted on his task suddenly refastening on me. Having built all evening had he suddenly reached the threshold of his restraint from a gesture so minute? Why that moment? Perhaps that is what had been building in the distance of his eyes. My neck and breasts tingled and his hand on either side of my face stopped. 

He just watched me, unmoving and I stroked the wet of my thumb down his lip, parting the bottom to see the beginnings of serration beginning and lingering. 

I kissed him.

It is a very different thing to kiss rather than ‘be’ kiss. Instead of drowning in the sensation, you are overwhelmed with your own foolish awareness. Did I press too hard? Too lightly? Part my lips too quickly? Too slowly? And each moment is an eternity, an eternity where the other remains stiff unresponsive, was it denial? Repulsion? Shock? And then-

Tender reciprocation and better almost than all that.

A vocal grumble which could not be mistaken as anything but coming from the deepest most desperate aching seat. He withdrew, his hands upon my clavicle seemingly torn between pulling and pushing and squeezing instead as he forced himself to pull his mouth away and look upon me again. 

“Stop tempting me to ruin you all at once.”

“Your presuming there is something left to, I thought you quite thorough.”

“You’d be surprised.” and he withdrew to look down at me, an edge of restraint marking his features.

“Good evening then.”

“Until tomorrow.”

And suddenly I was quite alone.

* * *

April 18th 1897

I record this now as I watch dawn. Will he be watching it I wonder? Or has only a single tie broken for him? I swept the crushed and deformed remains of that broken tie beneath the bed. Two bonds had been broken last night, so it is fitting symbol for us both is it not? Strangely I am not tired at all and in fact have very strong difficulties laying down to rest. So instead I’ve written my accounts and just heard my breakfast being left. I did not try to catch him, I am certain if he desired to see me then he would have, but I am hungry so it is good I might enjoy it fresh. 

A part of me feels so tired of all this writing and bothering. Who is it all for after all, likely there will never be any dear reader, certainly none who might appreciate or sympathize with such the depraved creature I have become. Perhaps I should simply throw it all into the fire to be devoured as I have been so totally and shall be. Then nothing of me might remain in this place beyond his departure.


	12. April 18th 1897

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sophie notes the arrival of new guests.

**Sophie Harker's Diary**

**_April 18th 1897_ **

**_-continued-_ **

* * *

Gypsies!

The Gypsies have arrived!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't murder me for this little nibblet.
> 
> It's not the end of the story, only this 'part'.  
> The next section will be up very soon, I hope everyone has enjoyed the journey so far, please look forward to continuing with me in to the conclusion in Reserata Carcerum Part Three for more Dracula Sophie depravity and delight.


End file.
